The present invention relates to a sorLA-based drug screening platform for use in screening compound libraries for an effect on endosomal activity.

The invention provides an isolated and purified nucleic acid sequence encoding a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) directed against B-cell Maturation Antigen (BCMA). The invention also provides host cells, such as T-cells or natural killer (NK) cells, expressing the CAR and methods for destroying multiple myeloma cells.

An invention provides a chimeric antigen receptor. The chimeric antigen receptor includes an extracellular domain including a heavy chain variable region, a light chain variable region of a single chain antibody fragment and CD8 hinge region; a transmembrane domain including an immune co-stimulator transmembrane domain; and an intracellular domain including an immune co-stimulator intracellular segment and CD3ζ chain. According to the embodiments of the invention, the chimeric antigen receptor can specifically recognize the tumor cells expressing the specific antigen and achieve the specific killing effect against the tumor cells expressing the high specific antigen.

The present invention is directed to compositions and methods to increase the expression of PD-L1 and/or IDO-1 in a population of cells, the modulated cells expressing increased PD-L1 and/or IDO-1, and methods related to the immunosuppressive effects obtained by cells expressing increased PD-L1 and/or IDO-1.

The disclosure provides inducible caspase polypeptides, compositions comprising inducible caspase polypeptides and sequences encoding the same, cells modified to express the polypeptides and compositions of the disclosure, as well as methods of making and methods of using same for adoptive cell therapy.

The disclosure provides inducible caspase polypeptides, compositions comprising inducible caspase polypeptides and sequences encoding the same, cells modified to express the polypeptides and compositions of the disclosure, as well as methods of making and methods of using same for adoptive cell therapy.

The present invention relates to peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and cells for use in immunotherapeutic methods. In particular, the present invention relates to the immunotherapy of cancer. The present invention furthermore relates to tumor-associated T-cell peptide epitopes, alone or in combination with other tumor-associated peptides that can for example serve as active pharmaceutical ingredients of vaccine compositions that stimulate anti-tumor immune responses, or to stimulate T cells ex vivo and transfer into patients. Peptides bound to molecules of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), or peptides as such, can also be targets of antibodies, soluble T-cell receptors, and other binding molecules.

The present disclosure relates to a PD-1 variant having improved binding affinity to PD-L1. In addition, the present disclosure relates to a method for preparing the PD-1 variant and a method for screening the PD-1 variant. The PD-1 variant of the present disclosure effectively inhibits the binding between wild-type PD-1 and PD-L1, and thus is expected to have significantly higher penetration ability and anticancer effect by immune cells or therapeutic effect for infectious diseases as compared to existing immune checkpoint inhibitors. At the same time, the possibility of immunogenicity can be minimized. In addition, the convenience of developing biomedicine may be promoted through aglycosylation.

In alternative embodiments, provided are compositions, including recombinant expression systems and vectors, products of manufacture and kits, and methods, for remotely-controlled and non-invasive manipulation of intracellular nucleic acid expression, genetic processes, function and activity in live cells such as T cells in vivo, for example, activating, adding functions or changing or adding specificities for immune cells, for monitoring physiologic processes, for the correction of pathological processes and for the control of therapeutic outcomes. In alternative embodiments, provided are blue-light-mediated light-inducible nuclear translocation and dimerization (LINTAD) systems for gene regulation to control cell activation based on the integration of light-sensitive LOV2-based nuclear localization, light-induced active transportation via the biLINuS motif, and CRY2-CIB1 dimerization that feature high spatiotemporal control to control or alter cell activities in vivo, for example, to limit CAR T cell activity to the tumor site for immunotherapy applications.

Provided herein are inhibitory chimeric antigen receptor compositions and cells comprising such compositions. Also provided are methods of using inhibitory chimeric antigen receptors and cells.