REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
This article is part of the Research TopicInterdisciplinary Innovations in CAR T-Cell Therapy for Autoimmune and Cancer TreatmentView all 6 articles
Engineered Cell Therapies for Autoimmune Diseases: Evaluating CAR-T and CAR-M Progress and Prospects
Provisionally accepted
- Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Autoimmune diseases (AID) comprise a diverse group of disorders driven by aberrant B-cell and T-cell reactivity against self-tissues. In recent years, cell-based therapies utilizing engineered T cells have emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for AIDs. Notably, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells have demonstrated the ability to selectively target and eliminate autoreactive immune populations, including pathogenic B cells and antibody-producing plasma cells. Beyond T-cell modulation, macrophages (MΦs) exhibit remarkable plasticity, differentiating into pro-inflammatory (M1) or anti-inflammatory (M2) phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues. Advances in genetic engineering have enabled the development of CAR-MΦs (CAR-M), which hold potential for adoptive immunotherapy in certain diseases. However, CAR-M therapy remains experimental and requires further clinical validation. This review systematically evaluates the therapeutic potential of CAR-T and CAR-M in AIDs, comparing their respective advantages and limitations to provide a comprehensive foundation for future translational applications.
Keywords: car-t, CAR-M, Autoimmune Diseases, Macrophages, ra, SLE
Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Chen and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hong Yang, yanghong@cdutcm.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.