Engineering of CD3 signaling chains for CAR T cell therapy

Cancer immunotherapy with T cells expressing Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) has revolutionized the treatment of patients with hematological cancer. Although CARs have been investigated for over 30 years, many open questions about the function of the domains of those synthetic receptors remain. Especially the mechanism of how signal transduction in CAR T cells occurs is under debate. In this project, the downstream signaling cascade in CAR T cells will be investigated and components of the T cell machinery will be altered to understand the fundamentals of signal transduction upon binding to a tumor antigen.