In a first aspect, provided herein are chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) composed of at least an extracellular domain, a transmembrane domain and an intracellular domain, the extracellular domain comprises a spacer domain located C-terminally to a ligand-binding-domain also present in the extracellular domain, whereby the spacer domain comprises at least part of the CD34 molecule. Also provided are nucleic acid molecules encoding the same as well as vectors and cells containing the same. The cells include engineered T-cells and NK-cells and derivatives thereof. A pharmaceutical composition comprising the CAR e.g. in form of a vector, a polynucleotide encoding the CAR or the CAR itself and, in addition, cells, cell lines or host cells accordingly are provided. The CAR is useful in adoptive cell therapy. Finally, a method for enrichment or purification of CAR, in particular, of genetically engineered cells, cell lines or host cells expressing the CAR is provided.
