Cancer remains one of the most prevalent and lethal diseases globally. Liquid tumor (hematological cancer) cell lines are vital in studying blood cancers and developing therapies. Immunotherapy, particularly chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, has shown great promise, improving outcomes in hematological malignancies. Since 2017, the FDA has approved six CAR T-cell therapies for blood cancers, including lymphomas, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.

Advancing CAR T-cell therapy requires basic mechanistic research, bioengineering, and clinical trials to enhance T-cell biology and improve CAR T-cell proliferation and durability. CRISPR-Cas9 technology offers new opportunities for genome-wide screening to identify genes that can boost CAR T-cell resilience.

This application note describes how liquid tumor cells can be monitored and how effects of cytolysing reagents or effector cells such as CAR T-cells can be quantified using an impedance-based assay employing the AtlaZ platform.