Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) expression detection is the process of identifying and measuring the presence of CARs on the surface of the target modified immune cells, usually T cells. These synthetic receptors are designed to recognize a specific antigen on the cancer cells; therefore, measuring the expression level of CARs is critical to determining efficacy of CAR therapies. With over 1,200 new cell therapies entering the clinical pipeline and many more in the research phase, CAR expression detection remains a critical analytical assay that is needed to ensure robust characterization of new cell therapies.

Starting from research and development to clinical research, CAR expression detection is performed throughout each stage. These applications include:

1. Developing New CAR Cell Therapies: Detection of CAR expression is a key component in new CAR cell therapies, including CAR-T. Researchers need to both confirm and quantify CAR expression, as well as confirm target antigen recognition before entering preclinical and clinical trials.

2. Assessing CAR Cell Therapy Success: During CAR cell manufacturing, CAR expression detection is necessary to confirm that the T cells have been successfully modified to express the CAR before they are infused back into the patient.

3. Monitoring CAR Cell Persistence and Expansion: After CAR-T cell therapy, it is important to monitor the persistence and expansion of the CAR-T cells in the patient's body. CAR expression detection allows clinicians to measure the number of CAR-T cells present in the patient's blood or tissue samples over time.

As the field of cell therapy continues to mature, there are also efforts underway to develop more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing processes for cell therapies, as well as to explore new technologies for delivering and targeting cell therapies to specific tissues and organs. It becomes even more critical to ensure that cell characterization and analytical methods used herein are robust and sensitive enough to ensure that these efforts produce safe and effective cell therapies.

Explore our Application Note on how to perform sensitive and robust CAR expression detection using our ‘Star Staining’ site-specific fluorescent labeled proteins using flow cytometry.