Nanotechnology-based platforms to improve immune checkpoint blockade efficacy in cancer therapy

CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout strategies for enhancing immunotherapy in breast cancer

Breast cancer, a prevalent disease with significant mortality rates, often presents treatment challenges due to its complex genetic makeup. This review explores the potential of combining Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) gene knockout strategies with immunotherapeutic approaches to enhance breast cancer treatment. The CRISPR/Cas9 system, renowned for its precision in inducing genetic alterations, can target and eliminate specific cancer cells, thereby minimizing off-target effects. Concurrently, immunotherapy, which leverages the immune system's power to combat cancer, has shown promise in treating breast cancer. By integrating these two strategies, we can potentially augment the effectiveness of immunotherapies by knocking out genes that enable cancer cells to evade the immune system. However, safety considerations, such as off-target effects and immune responses, necessitate careful evaluation. Current research endeavors aim to optimize these strategies and ascertain the most effective methods to stimulate the immune response. This review provides novel insights into the integration of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout strategies and immunotherapy, a promising avenue that could revolutionize breast cancer treatment as our understanding of the immune system's interplay with cancer deepens.

Nanodrug Delivery Systems in Antitumor Immunotherapy

Cancer has become one of the most important factors threatening human health, and the global cancer burden has been increasing rapidly. Immunotherapy has become another clinical research hotspot after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy because of its high efficiency and tumor metastasis prevention. However, problems such as lower immune response rate and immune-related adverse reaction in the clinical application of immunotherapy need to be urgently solved. With the development of nanodrug delivery systems, various nanocarrier materials have been used in the research of antitumor immunotherapy with encouraging therapeutic results. In this review, we mainly summarized the combination of nanodrug delivery systems and immunotherapy from the following 4 aspects: (a) nanodrug delivery systems combined with cytokine therapy to improve cytokines delivery in vivo; (b) nanodrug delivery systems provided a suitable platform for the combination of immune checkpoint blockade therapy with other tumor treatments; (c) nanodrug delivery systems helped deliver antigens and adjuvants for tumor vaccines to enhance immune effects; and (d) nanodrug delivery systems improved tumor treatment efficiency and reduced toxicity for adoptive cell therapy. Nanomaterials chosen by researchers to construct nanodrug delivery systems and their function were also introduced in detail. Finally, we discussed the current challenges and future prospects in combining nanodrug delivery systems with immunotherapy.

Nano-immunotherapy: overcoming delivery challenge of immune checkpoint therapy

Immune checkpoint (ICP) molecules expressed on tumor cells can suppress immune responses against tumors. ICP therapy promotes anti-tumor immune responses by targeting inhibitory and stimulatory pathways of immune cells like T cells and dendritic cells (DC). The investigation into the combination therapies through novel immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) has been limited due to immune-related adverse events (irAEs), low response rate, and lack of optimal strategy for combinatorial cancer immunotherapy (IMT). Nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as powerful tools to promote multidisciplinary cooperation. The feasibility and efficacy of targeted delivery of ICIs using NPs overcome the primary barrier, improve therapeutic efficacy, and provide a rationale for more clinical investigations. Likewise, NPs can conjugate or encapsulate ICIs, including antibodies, RNAs, and small molecule inhibitors. Therefore, combining the drug delivery system (DDS) with ICP therapy could provide a profitable immunotherapeutic strategy for cancer treatment. This article reviews the significant NPs with controlled DDS using current data from clinical and pre-clinical trials on mono- and combination IMT to overcome ICP therapeutic limitations.

Proof of concept nanotechnological approach to in vitro targeting of malignant melanoma for enhanced immune checkpoint inhibition

Immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, have limitations in their effective treatment of malignancies. The immunosuppressive environment associated with the tumor microenvironment may prevent the achievement of optimal outcomes for immune checkpoint inhibitors alone, and nanotechnology-based platforms for delivery of immunotherapeutic agents are increasingly being investigated for their potential to improve the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy. In this manuscript, nanoparticles were designed with appropriate size and surface characteristics to enhance their retention of payload so that they can transmit their loaded drugs to the tumor. We aimed to enhance immune cell stimulation by a small molecule inhibitor of PD-1/PD-L1 (BMS202) using nanodiamonds (ND). Melanoma cells with different disease stages were exposed to bare NDs, BMS202-NDs or BMS202 alone for 6 h. Following this, melanoma cells were co-cultured with freshly isolated human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (hPBMCs). The effects of this treatment combination on melanoma cells were examined on several biological parameters including cell viability, cell membrane damage, lysosomal mass/pH changes and expression of γHA2X, and caspase 3. Exposing melanoma cells to BMS202-NDs led to a stronger than normal interaction between the hPBMCs and the melanoma cells, with significant anti-proliferative effects. We therefore conclude that melanoma therapy has the potential to be enhanced by non-classical T-cell Immune responses via immune checkpoint inhibitors delivered by nanodiamonds-based nanoparticles.

Immune checkpoint inhibition mediated with liposomal nanomedicine for cancer therapy

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy for cancer has achieved great success both in clinical results and on the market. At the same time, success drives more attention from scientists to improve it. However, only a small portion of patients are responsive to this therapy, and it comes with a unique spectrum of side effects termed immune-related adverse events (irAEs). The use of nanotechnology could improve ICBs' delivery to the tumor, assist them in penetrating deeper into tumor tissues and alleviate their irAEs. Liposomal nanomedicine has been investigated and used for decades, and is well-recognized as the most successful nano-drug delivery system. The successful combination of ICB with liposomal nanomedicine could help improve the efficacy of ICB therapy. In this review, we highlighted recent studies using liposomal nanomedicine (including new emerging exosomes and their inspired nano-vesicles) in associating ICB therapy.

Study on Sgc8 Aptamer-mediated Nucleic Acid Nanomaterial-doxorubicin Complex for Tumor Targeted Therapy

Chemotherapy is one of the most important treatments for malignant cancers, but most chemotherapeutic drugs are poorly targeted, highly toxic and expensive, resulting in unsatisfactory treatment results for cancer patients. Therefore, intelligent drug delivery platforms are needed to be explored urgently to enhance drug treatment and reduce toxicity on normal cells. Nucleic acid nanomaterials are a class of nanomaterials developed on the basis of the "base complementary pairing principle", which have the advantages of good programmability, high stability, good biocompatibility, and strong targeting. Herein, we present a simple Sgc8 aptamer-modified nucleic acid nanomaterial (Sgc8NM) for the targeted delivery of Doxorubicin (Dox), a widely used chemotherapy drug in clinic. Studies have shown the Sgc8NM-Dox performed a precise treatment effect on target cells and low toxicity on non-target cells, providing a new strategy for the potential application of nanocomposite drugs in targeted cancer delivery.

Potential Nanotechnology-Based Therapeutics to Prevent Cancer Progression through TME Cell-Driven Populations

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer with a high risk of metastasis and therapeutic resistance. These issues are closely linked to the tumour microenvironment (TME) surrounding the tumour tissue. The association between residing TME components with tumour progression, survival, and metastasis has been well elucidated. Focusing on cancer cells alone is no longer considered a viable approach to therapy; thus, there is a high demand for TME targeting. The benefit of using nanoparticles is their preferential tumour accumulation and their ability to target TME components. Several nano-based platforms have been investigated to mitigate microenvironment-induced angiogenesis, therapeutic resistance, and tumour progression. These have been achieved by targeting mesenchymal originating cells (e.g., cancer-associated fibroblasts, adipocytes, and stem cells), haematological cells (e.g., tumour-associated macrophages, dendritic cells, and myeloid-derived suppressor cells), and the extracellular matrix within the TME that displays functional and architectural support. This review highlights the importance of nanotechnology-based therapeutics as a promising approach to target the TME and improve treatment outcomes for TNBC patients, which can lead to enhanced survival and quality of life. The role of different nanotherapeutics has been explored in the established TME cell-driven populations.

Nanomedicine-mediated optimization of immunotherapeutic approaches in cervical cancer

Cervical cancer shows immense complexity at the epigenetic, genetic and cellular levels, limiting conventional treatment. Immunotherapy has revolutionized nanomedicine and rejuvenated the field of tumor immunology. Although several immunotherapeutic approaches have shown favorable clinical responses, their efficacies vary, with subsets of patients benefitting. The success of cancer immunotherapy requires the enhancement of cytokines and antitumor effector cell production and activation. Recently, the feasibility of nanoparticle-based cytokine approaches in tumor immunotherapy has been highlighted. Immunotherapeutic nanoparticle-based platforms form a novel strategy enabling researchers to co-deliver immunomodulatory agents, target tumors, improve pharmacokinetics and minimize collateral toxicity to healthy cells. This review looks at the potential of immunotherapy and nanotechnologically enhanced immunotherapeutic approaches for cervical cancer.