In recent years, adoptive cell transfer therapy has shown remarkable clinical effects in tumor treatment. T cells and natural killer(NK) cells are commonly used in clinical adoptive immune cells and have achieved good results in the treatment of lymphoma and other malignant tumors. Chimeric antibody receptor (CAR) modification leads to CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies. CAR-T and CAR-NK cells can efficiently recognize tumor antigens and have good killing effect on tumor cells. Satisfactory results have been obtained in various cancer studies, and CAR-T and CAR-NK cells have become a hot field. This review summaries the development and application of CAR-modified immune cell therapy and discusses their challenges and future development.