Mild photothermal Therapy Potentiates Anti-PD-L1 Treatment for Immunologically Cold Tumors Via an All-in-one and All-in-control Strategy

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Oct 27

PMID 31653838

Citations 155

Authors

Liping Huang

Yanan Li

Yunai Du

Yiyi Zhang

Xiuxia Wang

Yuan Ding

Xiangliang Yang

Fanling Meng

Jiasheng Tu

Liang Luo

Chunmeng Sun

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

One of the main challenges for immune checkpoint blockade antibodies lies in malignancies with limited T-cell responses or immunologically "cold" tumors. Inspired by the capability of fever-like heat in inducing an immune-favorable tumor microenvironment, mild photothermal therapy (PTT) is proposed to sensitize tumors to immune checkpoint inhibition and turn "cold" tumors "hot." Here we present a combined all-in-one and all-in-control strategy to realize a local symbiotic mild photothermal-assisted immunotherapy (SMPAI). We load both a near-infrared (NIR) photothermal agent IR820 and a programmed death-ligand 1 antibody (aPD-L1) into a lipid gel depot with a favorable property of thermally reversible gel-to-sol phase transition. Manually controlled NIR irradiation regulates the release of aPD-L1 and, more importantly, increases the recruitment of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and boosts T-cell activity against tumors. In vivo antitumor studies on 4T1 and B16F10 models demonstrate that SMPAI is an effective and promising strategy for treating "cold" tumors.

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