Fig. 2.

Bi-specific T-cell engagers (BiTEs) involve the fusion of the single chain fragment variables of two monoclonal antibodies to bind both a T cell and a tumor cell with the goal of redirecting T cells to the tumor cells. Due to the invariant T-cell receptor (TCR) of natural killer T (NKT) cells, BiTEs are capable of also binding to the CD3 chain of NKT cells crosslinking them to antigen-specific tumor cells and allowing for direct NKT cell-mediated killing. Similarly, fusion of the scFV region of a HER2 antibody to a soluble CD1d loaded with αGalCer activates NKT cells to target and directly kill HER2 positive tumor cells