Fig. 1
From: Exhaustion of CAR T cells: potential causes and solutions
Schematic explanation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) structure and self-activation. A Basic structure of CAR. A CAR consists of three domains; extracellular, hinge/transmembrane, and intracellular domains. The extracellular domain of a CAR is the scFv containing a variable region of heavy chain (VH) and variable region of light chain (VL), which consist of four framework regions (FR1 ~ 4; blue/yellow) and three complementarity determining regions (CDR1 ~ 3; green). B Possible mechanism of CAR self-activation. CDRs are involved in antigen binding while FRs are associated with self-aggregation. By making hybrid of CDRs from the self-activating CAR of interest and FRs from non-self-aggregating CAR, self-activation can be avoided