Labeling Assembly of Hydrophilic Methionine into Nanoparticle for Mild-Heat Mediated Immunometabolic Therapy

Metabolic plasticity of T cell fate decision

ABSTRACT

The efficacy of adaptive immune responses in cancer treatment relies heavily on the state of the T cells. Upon antigen exposure, T cells undergo metabolic reprogramming, leading to the development of functional effectors or memory populations. However, within the tumor microenvironment (TME), metabolic stress impairs CD8 + T cell anti-tumor immunity, resulting in exhausted differentiation. Recent studies suggested that targeting T cell metabolism could offer promising therapeutic opportunities to enhance T cell immunotherapy. In this review, we provide a comprehensive summary of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors necessary for metabolic reprogramming during the development of effector and memory T cells in response to acute and chronic inflammatory conditions. Furthermore, we delved into the different metabolic switches that occur during T cell exhaustion, exploring how prolonged metabolic stress within the TME triggers alterations in cellular metabolism and the epigenetic landscape that contribute to T cell exhaustion, ultimately leading to a persistently exhausted state. Understanding the intricate relationship between T cell metabolism and cancer immunotherapy can lead to the development of novel approaches to improve the efficacy of T cell-based treatments against cancer.

Arginine-assembly as NO nano-donor prevents the negative feedback of macrophage repolarization by mitochondrial dysfunction for cancer immunotherapy

Repolarizing the tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) towards the antitumoral M1-like phenotype has been a promising approach for cancer immunotherapy. However, the anti-cancer immune response is severely limited mainly by the repolarized M1-like macrophages belatedly returning to the M2-like phenotype (i.e., negative feedback). Inspired by nitric oxide (NO) effectively preventing repolarization of inflammatory macrophages in inflammatory diseases, herein, we develop an arginine assembly, as NO nano-donor for NO generation to prevent the negative feedback of the macrophage repolarization. The strategy is to first apply reversible tagging of hydrophobic terephthalaldehyde to create an arginine nano-assembly, and then load a toll-like receptor 7/8 agonist resiquimod (R848) (R848@Arg). Through this strategy, a high loading efficiency of 40 % for the arginine and repolarization characteristics for TAMs can be achieved. Upon the macrophage repolarization by R848, NO can be intracellularly generated from the released arginine by the upregulated inducible nitric oxide synthase. Mechanistically, NO effectively prevented the negative feedback of the repolarized macrophage by mitochondrial dysfunction via blocking oxidative phosphorylation. Notably, R848@Arg significantly increased the tumor inhibition ratio by 3.13-fold as compared to the free R848 by maintaining the M1-like phenotype infiltrating into tumor. The Arg-assembly as NO nano-donor provides a promising method for effective repolarization of macrophages.