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CANCER NANOMEDICINE

Erythrocyte-mediated systemic immunotherapy

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 5, pages 385–386 (2021)Cite this article

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The restoration of a local chemokine gradient by nanoparticles non-covalently anchored on the surface of systemically administered red blood cells delays cancer progression in mouse models of lung metastasis.

The treatment of some metastatic cancers — which overall account for about 90% of cancer-associated deaths1 — has been revolutionized by immunotherapies. In particular, immune checkpoint blockade can induce durable responses, and even the complete regression of metastatic tumours, in a fraction of patients with metastatic melanoma or with triple-negative breast cancer2,3. For successful immune-checkpoint-blockade therapy, there are two prerequisites: the presence of tumour-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), and their infiltration into the metastatic nodules. Personalized cancer vaccines are now being actively investigated both preclinically and clinically with the aim to generate tumour-specific CTLs4. Tumour-specific antigens for cancer vaccines can be obtained via genome sequencing and by bioinformatics, or alternatively generated in situ in the primary tumours by triggering the immunogenic cell death of cancer cells using conventional chemotherapeutics such as doxorubicin5. However, the effectiveness of in situ vaccination approaches is often compromised by the suppressive tumour microenvironment, possibly owing to suppressive vesicles that tumour cells secrete to inhibit CTL activation in the tumour’s draining lymph nodes6.

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Fig. 1: Erythrocyte-anchored systemic cancer immunotherapy for lung metastases.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Drug Research & Center of Pharmaceutics, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Pengcheng Zhang & Yaping Li

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  1. Pengcheng Zhang
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  2. Yaping Li
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Correspondence to Pengcheng Zhang or Yaping Li.

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Zhang, P., Li, Y. Erythrocyte-mediated systemic immunotherapy. Nat Biomed Eng 5, 385–386 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00731-y

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