Non‐viral gene delivery for cancer immunotherapy

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed the revolutionary development of cancer immunotherapies, which boost cancer‐specific immune responses for long‐term tumor regression. However, immunotherapy still has limitations, including off‐target side effects, long processing times and limited patient responses. These disadvantages of current immunotherapy are being addressed by improving our understanding of the immune system, as well as by establishing combinational approaches. Advanced biomaterials and gene delivery systems overcome some of these delivery issues, harnessing adverse effects and amplifying immunomodulatory effects, and are superior to standard formulations with respect to eliciting antitumor immunity. Nucleic acid‐based nanostructures have diverse functions, ranging from gene expression and gene regulation to pro‐inflammatory effects, as well as the ability to specifically bind different molecules. A brief overview is provided of the recent advances in the non‐viral gene delivery methods that are being used to activate cancer‐specific immune responses. Furthermore, the tumor microenvironment‐responsive synergistic strategies that modulate the immune response by targeting various signaling pathways are discussed. Nanoparticle‐based non‐viral gene delivery strategies have great potential to be implemented in the clinic for cancer immunotherapy.

Stimuli‐activatable nanomedicines for chemodynamic therapy of cancer

“…Gao, Hu, et al, 2019). Recent studies have focused on reversing of the immunological tolerance TME for enhanced therapeutic performance (W. Wang et al, 2019;Q. Zhu et al, 2019).…”

“…Immunosuppressive TME negatively regulates the protective immune response and promote tumor progression (M. Saeed et al, ; A. Gao, Hu, et al, ). Recent studies have focused on reversing of the immunological tolerance TME for enhanced therapeutic performance (W. Wang et al, ; Q. Zhu et al, ). To reverse the immunosuppressive TME, Lan et al developed a MOF‐based nanoplatform (Fe‐TBP) for CDT (G. Lan et al, ).…”

Engineering Nanoparticles to Reprogram the Tumor Immune Microenvironment for Improved Cancer Immunotherapy

“…NPs are capable of manipulating immune cells by facilitating the targeted delivery, and can be taken up and escape the endosome to release cargo, including drugs, antigens, and adjuvants at intended target sites (tumor and lymph nodes), while escaping the pathophysiological barriers, such as compact extracellular matrix, endonucleases degradation, and renal clearance, etc. 1, 2, 19-28. Therefore, the curative potential of therapeutic agents can be extended by NP-mediated robust administration.…”

Non-Viral Targeted Nucleic Acid Delivery: Apply Sequences for Optimization

“…A series of different strategies are followed for synthetic nucleic acid delivery systems, including lipid-based, polymer-based or other nanomaterial-based formulations [ 12 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. As outlined in the following section, a significant variety of sequence-defined artificial polymers was generated, with the aim to improve nucleic acid delivery and their bioactivity.…”