Application of lipid-based nanoparticles in cancer immunotherapy

Abstract

Immunotherapy is revolutionizing the clinical management of patients with different cancer types by sensitizing autologous or allogenic immune cells to the tumor microenvironment which eventually leads to tumor cell lysis without rapidly killing normal cells. Although immunotherapy has been widely demonstrated to be superior to chemotherapies, only a few populations of patients with specific cancer types respond to such treatment due to the failure of systemic immune activation. In addition, severe immune-related adverse events are rapidly observed when patients with very few responses are given higher doses of such therapies. Recent advances of lipid-based nanoparticles (NPs) development have made it possible to deliver not only small molecules but also mRNAs to achieve systemic anticancer immunity through cytotoxic immune cell activation, checkpoint blockade, and chimeric antigen receptor cell therapies, etc. This review summarized recent development and applications of LNPs in anticancer immunotherapy. The diversity of lipid-based NPs would encapsulate payloads with different structures and molecular weights to achieve optimal antitumor immunity through multiple mechanisms of action. The discussion about the components of lipid-based NPs and their immunologic payloads in this review hopefully shed more light on the future direction of anticancer immunotherapy.

Lipid metabolism in tumor immunology and immunotherapy

“…However, even though encasing these antigenic peptides in liposomes can reduces their degradation, increase their presentation to antigen-presenting cells, and stimulate CD4 + T-cell response to tumors, generating peptide vaccines is expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, mRNA vaccines have emerged as a better alternative because they are cheaper, well-tolerated, faster to produce on a large scale, and easier to combine with liposomes ( 110 ). After an mRNA vaccine is injected, cells take up the mRNA and begins the translation of desired proteins in the cytoplasm.…”

Co-delivery of EGCG and melittin with self-assembled fluoro-nanoparticles for enhanced cancer therapy

“…In addition, during and after treatment, there will be serious immune-related adverse reactions, and the emergence of nanoparticles can better solve this problem. It has been proposed in the literature that the latest progress in the development of lipid nanoparticles (NP) can not only deliver small molecules, but also deliver mRNA to achieve systemic anti-cancer immunity through cytotoxic immune cell activation, checkpoint blocking and chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy [ 25 ]. The rise of nanotechnology has led to the development of drug delivery systems that selectively target tumor-specific tissues [ 26 ].…”

Harnessing genetically engineered cell membrane-derived vesicles as biotherapeutics

“…Chemotherapy, being one of the most pivotal strategies for cancer clinical treatment, has shown substantial efficacy in impeding tumor progression. However, decades of clinical data have proved that although chemotherapeutic agents effectively eliminate tumor cells and promote tumor regression, they inflict damage to normal cells within the body and lead to adverse effects including cytokine release syndrome, organ damage, and other cancer tumor lysis syndromes in patients, making the prognosis of patients after chemotherapy worse [67] .The therapy even caused tumor spontaneous metastasis in certain types of cancer models [68][69][70][71] . In recent years, synthetic drug delivery carriers such as liposomes have enhanced the efficacy of chemotherapy drugs and alleviated their inherent toxicity [72] .…”