Abstract: T cell receptor-engineered T cells (TCR-T) and chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) therapies are two main types of adoptive cell therapy(ACT), which can treat cancer by giving natural T cells specific recognition of tumor receptors through gene modification technique. CAR-T therapy has achieved remarkable success in relapsed or refractory hematological malignancies, especially in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), yet with less effect on solid tumors. TCR-T therapy has displayed some advantage over CAR-T therapy in treating solid tumors with inspiring clinical data. However, TCR-T therapy is faced with some challenges, including the selection of tumor-specific/associated antigens, selection and optimization of tumor-specific TCR, the persistence of TCR-T, and the safety of TCR-T therapy. This paper reviews the current development of TCR-T therapy and application of its preclinical animal models,and also discusses the progress made in the research on preclinical animal models employed to overcome the restrictive factors of TCR-T therapy, in the hope that TCR-T therapy will eventually benefit more cancer patients in the future.