Immunostimulant nanomodulator boosts antitumor immune response in triple negative breast cancer by synergism of vessel normalization and photothermal therapy

Tumor vascular dysfunction and immune suppression predict poor outcomes of tumor therapy.Combination of photothermal therapy(PTT)and vessel normalization with tumor immunotherapy is promising to augment antitumor benefit.Herein,we develop a potential immunostimulatory nanomodulator for treatment of triple-negative breast cancer(TNBC)treatment via synergism of PTT,vessel normalization,and priming of tumoral suppressive immune microenvironment by blocking transforming growth factor-β(TGF-β)pathway.The nanomodulator,namely Vac@Apt@BPs,is developed by conjugation of TGF-βinhibitor Vactosertib(Vac)and nucleolin-recognizing aptamer(Apt)on the surface of black phosphorus nanoparticles(BPs).Vac@Apt@BPs show good accumulation in TNBC via aptamer-induced active targeting of TNBC.Via the blockade of TGF-βsignaling,Vac@Apt@BPs effectively inhibit the formation of tumor neovascular,and normalize the vessels to recover vascular integrity and alleviate the hypoxia stress.Together with the tumor eradication and immunogenic cell death via PTT,robust immune response was boosted by promoted maturation of dendritic cells,suppression of regulatory T cells,and stimulation of effective T cells.This synergistic therapeutic strategy potentially suppresses the growth of TNBC in mice.

Cascade two-stage tumor re-oxygenation and immune re-sensitization mediated by self-assembled albumin-sorafenib nanoparticles for enhanced photodynamic immunotherapy

As a promising modality for cancer therapy, photodynamic therapy(PDT) still acquired limited success in clinical nowadays due to the extremely serious hypoxia and immunosuppression tumor microenvironment. To ameliorate such a situation, we rationally designed and prepared cascade two-stage re-oxygenation and immune re-sensitization BSA-MHI148@SRF nanoparticles via hydrophilic and hydrophobic self-assembly strategy by using near-infrared photodynamic dye MHI148 chemically modified bovine serum albumin(BSA-MHI148) and multi-kinase inhibitor Sorafenib(SRF) as a novel tumor oxygen and immune microenvironment regulation drug. Benefiting from the accumulation of SRF in tumors, BSA-MHI148@SRF nanoparticles dramatically enhanced the PDT efficacy by promoting cascade two-stage tumor re-oxygenation mechanisms:(i) SRF decreased tumor oxygen consumption via inhibiting mitochondria respiratory.(ii) SRF increased the oxygen supply via inducing tumor vessel normalization. Meanwhile, the immunosuppression micro-environment was also obviously reversed by two-stage immune re-sensitization as follows:(i) Enhanced immunogenic cell death(ICD) production amplified by BSA-MHI148@SRF induced reactive oxygen species(ROS) generation enhanced T cell infiltration and improve its tumor cell killing ability.(ii) BSA-MHI148@SRF amplified tumor vessel normalization by VEGF inhibition also obviously reversed the tumor immune-suppression microenvironment. Finally, the growth of solid tumors was significantly depressed by such well-designed BSAMHI148@SRF nanoparticles, which could be potential for clinical cancer therapy.