Meet the molecules trying to crowd out CAR-T

The benefits of CAR-T, namely curing patients once thought untreatable, have come alongside some serious drawbacks, headlined by a high price tag and a laborious manufacturing process. But what if you could do a similar cancer-killing job without the need for time-consuming genetic engineering?

As STAT’s Sharon Begley writes, that's exactly the idea behind bispecific antibodies. The two-pronged molecules are designed to latch onto tumor cells with one tentacle and ensnare immune cells with the other, dragging the two together like cytotoxic matchmakers and helping patients in the process.

That offers hope that bispecifics might work in cancers where standard immunotherapy is of little use and find quarter treating the tumor types now served by costly CAR-T.

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