Cellular immunotherapeutics aim to employ immune cells as anticancer agents. Ex vivo engineering of dendritic cells (DCs), the initial role of an immune response, benefits tumor elimination by boosting specific antitumor responses. However, directly activating DCs in vivo is less efficient and therefore quite challenging. Here, we designed a nanoactivator that manufactures DCs through autophagy upregulating in vivo directly, which lead to a high-efficiency antigen presention of DCs and antigen-specific T cells generation. The nanoactivator significantly enhances tumor antigen cross-presentation and subsequent T cell priming. Consequently, in vivo experiments show that the nanoactivators successfully reduce tumor growth and prolong murine survival. Taken together, these results indicate in situ DCs manipulation by autophagy induction is a promising strategy for antigen presentation enhancement and tumor elimination.

The fabrication of functional assemblies with defined structures through controllable molecular packing under physiological conditions is challenging.Here,modularly designed peptide-cyanine conjugates that intracellularly selfassembly into 1D columnar superstructures with controlled cyanine aggregation were designed, and they exhibit distinct imaging or photothermal properties.T he peptide backbone is cleaved by caspase-3/7 after entering the cells.T hen the selfassembled residue,w ith ad ouble cyanine substitution (Pr-2Cy), forms aPhelical column in which H-aggregated cyanine dyes show 3.4-fold photothermal conversion efficiency compared to free ones.T he self-assembled residue with as ingle cyanine substitution (Pr-1Cy)forms aloose column, in which cyanine dyes with undefined structure have af luorescence quantum yield of up to 9.5 %(emission at 819 nm in H 2 O). This work provides as imple wayt om odify in vivo selfassembled peptides with functional molecules for achieving desired bio-applications.

Modulated molecular design‐based intracellular self‐assembly strategy has showed great potentiality in drug delivery, due to its assembling nature‐resulted optimized drug biodistribution and metabolism. The modular designing concept endows the delivery system multiple functions, such as, selectivity and universality to improve the pharmacokinetics of loaded drugs. However, the accurate controlling of the self‐assembling process in desired site to achieve optimal drug delivery is posed great challenges toward rational molecular design. Here, we fabricated a modulated drug‐delivery system (MDS) through intracellular peptide self‐assembly to realize effective drug delivery. MDS was designed based on modulated molecular designing strategy which contains five functional motifs and effectively transformed into fibrous nanostructures inside target cells by caspase3/7 hydrolysis directed in situ self‐assembly. The experimental studies and molecular simulations were carried out to evaluate the successful construction and delivering efficacy of MDS. According to the experimental results and molecular simulation analysis, the percentage of solvent‐exposed surface area of assembling modular (KLVFFAE), as well as its non‐covalent interaction between four other modules synergeticly decide the solubility of molecules. The weak intramolecular forces of the peptide back bone, such as, hydrogen bond, as well as multivalent interactions of the side chains such as, salt bridge and hydrophobic interaction both contribute to the self‐assembly of the molecules. The significant structural difference between delivering molecules optimize the system to adapt hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs. Finally, the predicted drug delivery molecule specifically recognizes targeted cancer cell lines and self‐assembles to form fibers intracellularly, resulting in prolonged drug retention and accumulation. The regular prediction and rational molecular design will benefit the further construction and optimization of modulated drug delivery platform.