Chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) T cells are T cells engineered to express membrane receptors with high specificity to recognize specific target antigens presented by cancer cells and are co-stimulated with intracellular signals to increase the T cell response. CAR-T cell therapy is emerging as a novel therapeutic approach to improve T cell specificity that will lead to advances in precision medicine. CAR-T cells have had impressive outcomes in hematological malignancies. However, there continue to be significant limitations of these therapeutic responses in targeting solid malignancies such as heterogeneous antigens in solid tumors, tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment, risk of on-target/off-tumor, infiltrating CAR-T cells, immunosuppressive checkpoint molecules, and cytokines. This review paper summarizes recent approaches and innovations through combination therapies of CAR-T cells and other immunotherapy or small molecule drugs to counter the above disadvantages to potentiate the activity of CAR-T cells.

The data presented in this article is related to the research article titled “Racial differences in dietary choices and their relationship to inflammatory potential in childbearing age women at risk for exposure to COVID-19”. This data article provides details of dietary intake data from 509 women (African American, n = 327 and Caucasian American, n = 182) who are residents of Birmingham, AL. All women were characterized for demographic and lifestyle factors and indicators of excess body weight (EBW) that are likely to influence overall dietary habits. Dietary intake data was collected by administering the modified version of the NCI validated Block food frequency questionnaire (98.2-isoflav version) that includes 110 food items of the original version (98.2 version) and an additional 24 phytochemical rich food items. The data article describes our approach to derive the dietary inflammatory score using a validated empirical dietary inflammatory index based on the frequency and the amount of consumption of each food item with minor modifications. This data will allow researchers to understand the composition of a Southern-style diet consumed by women of childbearing age and its relationship to inflammatory potential, EBW, dietary guidelines, dietary reference intakes or diet quality indices.