Engineered natural killer cells for cancer therapy

Abstract

Allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell immunotherapy is emerging as a promising and scalable, off-the-shelf platform for treating relapsed and refractory cancers. Early-phase clinical trials have demonstrated remarkable safety and encouraging therapeutic efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cells in heavily pretreated patients with lymphoid malignancies. Current efforts are expanding these therapies to solid tumors, with translational research increasingly leveraging precision gene editing to enhance effector function, persistence, and resistance to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. In this review, we summarize findings from early-phase clinical trials and discuss emerging synthetic biology and engineering approaches to improve NK cell potency. We also highlight advances in high-throughput discovery platforms that have identified actionable gene targets for NK cell reprogramming, offering a path to design multi-engineered CAR-NK cells to overcome the challenges of solid tumors. Together, these translational innovations define the trajectory of next-generation NK cell therapies and their integration into the broader cancer immunotherapy landscape.

Keywords: CRISPR screening; adoptive cell therapy; cancer immunotherapy; cellular engineering; chimeric antigen receptor; natural killer cells; perturbomics; precision gene editing; solid tumors; tumor microenvironment.