Combining activatable nanodelivery with immunotherapy in a murine breast cancer model. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A successful chemotherapy-immunotherapy solid-tumor protocol should accomplish the following goals: debulk large tumors, release tumor antigen for cross-presentation and cross-priming, release cancer-suppressive cytokines and enhance anti-tumor immune cell populations. Thermally-activated drug delivery particles have the potential to synergize with immunotherapeutics to accomplish these goals; activation can release chemotherapy within bulky solid tumors and can enhance response when combined with immunotherapy. We set out to determine whether a single protocol, combining locally-activated chemotherapy and agonist immunotherapy, could accomplish these goals and yield a potentially translational therapy. For effective delivery of free doxorubicin to tumors with minimal toxicity, we stabilized doxorubicin with copper in temperature-sensitive liposomes that rapidly release free drug in the vasculature of cancer lesions upon exposure to ultrasound-mediated hyperthermia. We found that in vitro exposure of tumor cells to hyperthermia and doxorubicin resulted in immunogenic cell death and the local release of type I interferons across murine cancer cell lines. Following intravenous injection, local activation of the liposomes within a single tumor released doxorubicin and enhanced cross-presentation of a model antigen at distant tumor sites. While a variety of protocols achieved a complete response in >50% of treated mice, the complete response rate was greatest (90%) when 1week of immunotherapy priming preceded a single activatable chemotherapeutic administration. While repeated chemotherapeutic delivery reduced local viable tumor, the complete response rate and a subset of tumor immune cells were also reduced. Taken together, the results suggest that activatable chemotherapy can enhance adjuvant immunotherapy; however, in a murine model the systemic adaptive immune response was greatest with a single administration of chemotherapy.

published proceedings

  • J Control Release

altmetric score

  • 10.75

author list (cited authors)

  • Kheirolomoom, A., Silvestrini, M. T., Ingham, E. S., Mahakian, L. M., Tam, S. M., Tumbale, S. K., ... Ferrara, K. W.

citation count

  • 28

complete list of authors

  • Kheirolomoom, Azadeh||Silvestrini, Matthew T||Ingham, Elizabeth S||Mahakian, Lisa M||Tam, Sarah M||Tumbale, Spencer K||Foiret, Josquin||Hubbard, Neil E||Borowsky, Alexander D||Ferrara, Katherine W

publication date

  • January 2019