Leveraging Immunotherapy with Nanomedicine

Abstract

Considerable progress has been made in the development and understanding of immunotherapy, notably with the emergence of novel chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) which changed the perception of personalized therapy. However, cell-based immunotherapy not only lacks therapeutic efficiency in various solid cancers but also raises concerns related to important side effects. The convergence of immunotherapy and nanomedicine is timely as nanoparticles can now be easily conjugated to various antibodies and peptides enabling outstanding abilities to target specific cell populations in vivo. Here, the state of the art of immunonanotherapy that activates the immune system in vivo, by acting either as vaccines or as tumor microenvironment (TME) activators is described. Then, the development of ex vivo immune-cell surface labeling strategies is discussed to exploit immune cells as trojan horses and thereby improving the delivery of the therapeutics in the TME. Such a strategy is likely to considerably amplify the efficacy of immunotherapy.

Enhanced Targeting and Immune Activation of Tumor Microenvironment by Nanomodified Anti‐PD1 in Liver Cancer

“…[ 6 ] Improvements in ICI treatment may arise from design of systems to improve antibody accumulation and retention within target [ 7 ] or to generate synergistic immunomodulatory effect. [ 8 ] Tumor cells secrete substances to switch macrophages from a tumor‐killing state to a tumor‐promoting state. Immunotherapeutic strategies offer potential control over polarization and recruitment of macrophages, especially to inhibit cancer progression.…”

Supramolecular Heterodimer Peptides Assembly for Nanoparticles Functionalization

“…[3] In oncology, and more specifically in immuno-oncology, this approach is broadly applied to enhance NPs uptake by tumors or to direct them toward specific immune cells. [4][5][6] However, previously reported studies suggest that the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of targeted nanoparticles (NPs) are primarily influenced by the inherent physicochemical properties of the NPs themselves rather than the biofunctionalization process. [7,8] Existing methods of functionalizing NPs with monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) face challenges in achieving controlled NP-to-mAb ratios and site-specific conjugation, which can induce risks associated with heterogeneous batches.…”

“…[ 3 ] In oncology, and more specifically in immuno‐oncology, this approach is broadly applied to enhance NPs uptake by tumors or to direct them toward specific immune cells. [ 4–6 ] However, previously reported studies suggest that the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of targeted nanoparticles (NPs) are primarily influenced by the inherent physicochemical properties of the NPs themselves rather than the biofunctionalization process. [ 7,8 ]…”