Biomaterials for Canncer Immunotherapy Triggered by Local Tumor Treatment

Immunotherapy has attracted tremendous attention in recent years to treat many challenging diseases including cancer. In our recent studies, we have tried to combine phototherapy with immunotherapy using nano-agents as an innovation approach for cancer treatment. Those nanoparticles not only exhibit strong near-infrared (NIR) absorbance for efficient photothermal conversion, but also could serve as nano-adjuvants to promote the immunological responses. Stimulated by the tumor-associated antigens released after photothermal tumor ablation, the triggered immunological responses if in combination with anti-CTLA4 immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy to suppress the activity of regulatory T cells could result in effective inhibition of tumor cells remaining in the body, promising for treatment of cancer metastasis. A strong immune-memory effect was also observed after such treatment. Such a new strategy of cancer immunotherapy that works for various tumor types could effectively ablate primary tumors, inhibit metastases, and trigger strong immune-memory effects to prevent tumor relapses. Beyond photo-immunotherapy, we have extended this strategy in our latest efforts to effectively treat metastatic tumors by combining radiation therapy with ICB immunotherapy based on rationally designed biomaterial platforms, achieving exciting therapeutic outcomes in different types of animal tumor models.

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