TCR-T cell therapy for advanced solid tumors: a critical review of the 2026 ASCO annual meeting data

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) has transformed hematologic malignancies, but its impact on solid tumors remains limited by biological barriers that engineered T cells must overcome. T-cell receptor (TCR)-engineered T-cell (TCR-T) therapy addresses a fundamental constraint of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells—the restriction to surface antigens—by recognizing intracellular targets presented by peptide-MHC complexes, thereby expanding the addressable antigen repertoire to the entire proteome. Adoptive transfer of T cells gene-engineered with antigen-specific T-cell receptors has demonstrated feasibility and therapeutic potential, yielding substantial progress in the treatment of solid tumors. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the latest clinical data on novel TCR-T therapies from the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, presenting the broadest TCR-T clinical dataset to date across eight studies targeting five antigen classes spanning synovial sarcoma, melanoma, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), ovarian, head and neck, and colorectal cancers. Across all studies, no treatment-related deaths were reported. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously because current evidence is derived mainly from early-phase, single-arm studies enrolling highly selected patients based on HLA type and antigen expression. Differences in tumor types, prior treatment exposure, response evaluation methods, and follow-up duration limit direct comparisons between studies. This review provides a critical synthesis of these 2026 ASCO findings, organized to highlight translational trends, breakthroughs, and the barriers that must be addressed before TCR-T therapy can achieve broad clinical impact in solid tumors.