Fighting Cardiac Fibrosis with CAR T Cells

Fibrosis, or scarring, is a well-recognized response to tissue injury throughout the human body.¹ More than 40% of all deaths in the industrialized world are attributable to scarring of the heart, liver, lung, kidney, bone marrow, or skin, among other tissues. Major advances have clarified our understanding of fibrosis - in particular, the identification of the fibrogenic cells within each tissue. A general paradigm is that resident perivascular mesenchymal cells - pericytes and fibroblasts - which may harbor both shared and unique features across tissues, transform, on activation through tissue injury, into contractile fibrogenic cells (myofibroblasts) that secrete “scar” molecules, primarily interstitial collagens and specialized glycoproteins, to create a dense network that can interfere with organ function.