Abstract 2711: Repurposing CAR targets in solid tumors from pan-cancer single-cell RNA-seq data

Abstract Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is a powerful and promising tool for unleashing lasting antitumor immunity, which is currently studied in numerous blood and solid cancers. Here, mining single cell transcriptomics datasets of solid tumors, we survey many existing CAR targets, aiming to identify new solid tumor types in which these targets are differentially expressed in tumor cells and not on non-tumor cells within the tumor microenvironment, thus providing new repurposing opportunities. Quite surprisingly, we find that many existing solid cancer CAR targets have a better discriminatory power in uncharted cancer types than in the ones they have been developed or being tested for. Furthermore, we show that several existing liquid cancer CAR targets may also hold promise in specific solid tumors. Taken together, this analysis uncovers a large potential of repurposing current CARs that is currently yet untapped. Citation Format: Sanna Madan, Alejandro Schäffer, Eytan Ruppin. Repurposing CAR targets in solid tumors from pan-cancer single-cell RNA-seq data [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 2711.