New Era of CAR T Cells for Infectious Viral Diseases

In an era of rapidly changing global scenarios, emerging infectious viral outbreaks are alarming public health and have become a global concern. Indeed, despite intricate armamentarium and progress in drug development, Infectious Viral Diseases (IVDs) are still on the list of trepidation to humans leading to significant morbidity and mortality. Cellular Immuno Therapy (CIT) has made remarkable achievements in treating hematological lymphomas in the past decade. Later, six Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) products were approved by FDA for use. The CIT approach has led researchers and clinicians to develop CAR technology for the remedy of various IVD. CARs are structured with four major components, i.e., (1) extracellularly located domain for antigen binding, (2) hinge region binding between extracellular domain, (3) transmembrane domain, as well as (4) a signaling domain that mediates the T-cell activation intracellularly. CARs are formed to be modular synthetic receptors with the variable region of heavy chain and light chain of mAbs, which are connected by peptide linker and form the single chain variable fragments (scFv). This approach of designing CARs for cancer has inspired researchers to expand it for treating IVD. In this review, we will give a limelight on the CAR T-cell development as well as discuss this novel revolutionary therapy, for the treatment of IVD patients who do not respond to the traditional therapy. CAR T-cell products are developed to enhance and improve the therapeutic advantages for IVD. We have outlined the key accomplishment in CAR T technology targeting the IVD, such as the Corona virus disease (SARS-CoV-2), human immunodeficiency virus, Hepatitis B virus, Hepatitis C virus, Cyto Megalo virus, and Epstein–Barr virus.