Publications
NatureSep 2025 DOI:
10.1038/s41586-025-09507-9

Systematic discovery of CRISPR-boosted CAR T cell immunotherapies

Datlinger, Paul; Pankevich, Eugenia V; Arnold, Cosmas D; Pranckevicius, Nicole; Lin, Jenny; Romanovskaia, Daria; Schaefer, Moritz; Piras, Francesco; Orts, Anne-Christine; Nemc, Amelie; Biesaga, Paulina N; Chan, Michelle; Neuwirth, Teresa; Artemov, Artem V; Li, Wentao; Ladstätter, Sabrina; Krausgruber, Thomas; Bock, Christoph
Product Used
Variant Libraries
Abstract
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has shown remarkable success in treating blood cancers, but CAR T cell dysfunction remains a common cause of treatment failure1. Here we present CELLFIE, a CRISPR screening platform for enhancing CAR T cells across multiple clinical objectives. We performed genome-wide screens in human primary CAR T cells, with readouts capturing key aspects of T cell biology, including proliferation, target cell recognition, activation, apoptosis and fratricide, and exhaustion. Screening hits were prioritized using a new in vivo CROP-seq2 method in a xenograft model of human leukaemia, establishing several gene knockouts that boost CAR T cell efficacy. Most notably, we discovered that RHOG knockout is a potent and unexpected CAR T cell enhancer, both individually and together with FAS knockout, which was validated across multiple in vivo models, CAR designs and sample donors, and in patient-derived cells. Demonstrating the versatility of the CELLFIE platform, we also conducted combinatorial CRISPR screens to identify synergistic gene pairs and saturation base-editing screens to characterize RHOG variants. In summary, we discovered, validated and biologically characterized CRISPR-boosted CAR T cells that outperform standard CAR T cells in widely used benchmarks, establishing a foundational resource for optimizing cell-based immunotherapies.
Product Used
Variant Libraries

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