Next-gen CARs: High-throughput screening for improved therapeutic responses

Systematic discovery of novel CAR designs that drive more favorable T cell phenotypes against tumors has been onerous due to technical constraints in library design and high-throughput screening. Ginkgo created a 10,000-member CAR library composed of different combinations of immune cell signaling components and established a pooled screen platform to discover optimized CAR designs in primary T and NK cells. The platform is extendable to different cell types, binders and can even be used for in vivo screens. In large scale arrayed validated studies, our pooled screen hits have shown enhanced functional properties. Multiple new designs are available for evaluation by our partners.

This work was presented at the 27th annual meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) in our poster "In Vivo Pooled Screening Platform for the Discovery of Optimized Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) Design in T cells." Download the poster and read coverage of our work in Nature Biotechnology News.