Efficient Nanovaccine Delivery in Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract

Vaccines hold tremendous potential for cancer immunotherapy by treating the immune system. Subunit vaccines, including molecular adjuvants and cancer-associated antigens or cancer-specific neoantigens, can elicit potent antitumor immunity. However, subunit vaccines have shown limited clinical benefit in cancer patients, which is in part attributed to inefficient vaccine delivery. In this Perspective, we discuss vaccine delivery by synthetic nanoparticles or naturally derived nanoparticles for cancer immunotherapy. Nanovaccines can efficiently codeliver adjuvants and multiepitope antigens into lymphoid organs and into antigen-presenting cells, and the intracellular release of vaccine and cross-presentation of antigens can be fine-tuned via nanovaccine engineering. Aside from peptide antigens, antigen-encoding mRNA for cancer immunotherapy delivered by nanovaccine will also be discussed.

Immunomodulatory Nanosystems

“…[180] A process named cross-presentation allows presentation of exogenous antigen via MHCI pathway, where antigens escape from endosome, get processed by cytosolic proteasome, and then form epitope-MHCI complex before being presented to CD8+ T cells. [180] A process named cross-presentation allows presentation of exogenous antigen via MHCI pathway, where antigens escape from endosome, get processed by cytosolic proteasome, and then form epitope-MHCI complex before being presented to CD8+ T cells.…”

Endolysosomal‐Escape Nanovaccines through Adjuvant‐Induced Tumor Antigen Assembly for Enhanced Effector CD8+ T Cell Activation

“…Ex vivo generated DC vaccines pulsed with tumor‐associated antigens show promising results in preliminary clinical trials, but these vaccine preparation processes for each individual patient require specialized good manufacturing practice (GMP) facilities, equipment and trained personnel, and may affect DC viability and migratory capacity, thus hampering widespread clinical application . Therefore, alternative vaccination strategies that directly pulse DCs with tumor‐associated antigens in vivo would be more suitable for clinical practice, and more importantly, would exploit the native migratory capacity of DCs …”

Nanomaterials for cancer immunotherapy

“…In addition, giving antigen and adjuvant independently in the clinic as free, separate forms may result in immune tolerance due to lack of “danger signals” to DCs encountering antigens [66, 67]. The use of nanomaterials to co-encapsulate and co-deliver antigen and adjuvants will protect the cargos from degradation and increase DC uptake efficiency, and may result in more robust T-cell responses [38, 39, 49]. …”