•A review specifically summarising PD-1 disrupted CAR T cells as cancer therapeutics.•Antitumor activity of CAR T cells can be enhanced significantly by PD-1 disruption.•This new combination strategy could be the new hope for solid tumor treatment.•Increasing number of clinical trials on these CAR T cells have been commenced.•Future prospects & challenges of this new combination strategy are discussed. Unprecedented efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy in the treatment of hematologic malignancies brings new hope for patients with many cancer types including solid tumors. However, the challenges for CAR-T cell therapy in eradicating solid tumors are immense. To overcome these seemingly intractable hurdles, more “powerful” CAR-T cells with enhanced antitumor efficacy are required. Emerging data support that the anti-tumor activity of CAR-T cells can be enhanced significantly without evident toxicity through simultaneous PD-1 disruption by genome editing. This review focuses on the current progress of PD-1 gene disrupted CAR-T cells in cancer therapy. Here we discuss key rationales for this new combination strategy and summarize the available pre-clinical studies. An update is provided on human clinical studies and available registered cancer clinical trials using CAR-T cells with PD-1 disruption. Future prospects and challenges are also discussed.