GoCART

Summary

GoCART pushes the frontier of DeSci by demonstrating how decentralized, community-driven funding can accelerate the development of complex, high-impact synthetic biology IP. Scientifically, we are moving beyond single-target therapies to a new paradigm of programmable, "smart" cell therapies that can address the inherent complexity of cancer, which has been the primary blocker for treating most cancers with cell therapy.

Problem

Existing CAR-T cell therapies, while revolutionary for some blood cancers, **fail to succeed outside of a narrow set of cancer types** and suffer from severe "on-target, off-tumor" toxicity. This is due to cancer antigens often being shared with healthy cells, leading to life-threatening side effects (e.g., cytokine release syndrome, neurotoxicity) and antigen escape, where tumors evade single-target therapies. The fundamental problem is a lack of precision, safety, and adaptability.

Impact

GoCART's solution is a novel **AND-gate CAR-T design** that incorporates logic. Our engineered T-cells activate _only_ when they detect _multiple_ specific cancer antigens simultaneously on a target cell. This significantly enhances specificity, mitigates off-target toxicity, and reduces antigen escape. Our edge lies in this modular, tunable logic-gating system that enables safer, more effective CAR-T therapies with broad applicability beyond existing limitations.