Targeting Nanoparticles to Dendritic Cells for Immunotherapy

Potential applications of nanoparticles in cancer immunotherapy

“…72 Although small NPs (< 500 nm) can be efficiently internalized by local DCs, active targeting of designed NPs through molecular recognition, i.e., ligand-receptor interaction or antibody-antigen recognition, has been shown to be efficient in codelivering Ags and other stimulatory molecules to specific DC population. 73,74 Particulate delivery systems including virus vectors, whole-cell vaccines, virosomes, immunostimulating complexes (ISCOMs), virus-like particles (VLPs) and other biodegradable nanocarriers can carry specific ligands and thereby increase interaction with target cells as compared to soluble antigens. For example, Cruz et al investigated three distinct cell-surface receptors expressed on DCs as targets for pegylated poly(lactic-coglycolic acid) (PLGA) NPs: i) CD40, a TNF-a family receptor with known DC activating properties after binding to its specific ligand; ii) DEC-205, a C-type lectin receptor, and iii) CD11c, integrin receptor.…”

Dendritic Cell Targets for Self-Replicating RNA Vaccines

“…Vaccine delivery to DCs is an important consideration due to their essential roles in immune defence development [8,17,19,[21][22][23][24] -DCs are referred to as the "professional antigen-presenting cells". A major advance in this area came from the application of mRNA vaccines.…”

“…In this context, application of biodegradable nanoparticle delivery systems -have been widely studied and applied with protein-based vaccines -has demonstrated their high potential for nucleic acid delivery to DCs [8,20]. Importantly, nanoparticulate formulation can both protect an RNA vaccine and promote delivery to the DCs [8,[19][20][21]. Nevertheless, mRNA vaccines can be generated with applicability as "naked" RNA (no delivery vehicle).…”

“…Nanoparticulate vehicles, which have involved primarily lipid-based and carbohydrate-based systems [8,20], can enhance the protection of the RNA, or even render the capping procedure unnecessary. Moreover, many of these delivery vehicles have a proven capacity for interacting with DCs for delivery of their cargoes; in the case of RNA delivery, this has also led to the end goal of the deliverytranslation of the encoded vaccine antigen [3,8,[19][20][21].…”

“…Such difficulties do not arise with RNA vaccines, but these suffer from high lability, especially in RNase-containing extracellular and intracellular environments. Delivery of DNA vaccines has provided the means of facilitating RNA vaccine applicability, namely through the employment of biodegradable, nanoparticulate delivery vehicles [2,8,[17][18][19][20][21]. The delivery vehicle can protect the RNA as well as enhancing its delivery to cells, for which interaction with DCs would prove a major contribution to development of immune defences.…”