The study, published in Cancer Cell, opens new avenues for discovering approaches to enhance the antitumor activity of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cell therapies against multiple cancer types via PreCiSE, a comprehensive CRISPR discovery platform optimized for primary human NK cells.

“Targeted gene editing is a powerful tool to enhance the anticancer activity of NK cells,” said corresponding author Katy Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy and vice president and head of the Institute for Cell Therapy Discovery & Innovation.

“PreCiSE is more than a screening tool. It is a roadmap that reveals how tumors suppress our cells and how to reengineer CAR NK cells to resist those pressures across many cancer types.”