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Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Microfluidic Co-Culture Models for Dissecting the Immune Response in in vitro Tumor Microenvironments
Published on: April 30, 2021
Tumor Microenvironment Modulating CaCO3 -Based Colloidosomal Microreactors Can Generally Reinforce Cancer
Ziliang Dong1,2, Yan Liu3, Chunjie Wang1
1Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, 199 Ren'ai Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Tumor hypoxia and acidity, two general features of solid tumors, are known to have negative effect on cancer immunotherapy by directly causing dysfunction of effector immune cells and promoting suppressive immune cells inside tumors. Herein, a multifunctional colloidosomal microreactor is constructed by encapsulating catalase within calcium carbonate (CaCO3 ) nanoparticle-assembled colloidosomes (abbreviated as CaP CSs) via the classic double emulsion method. The yielded CCaP CSs exhibit well-retained proton-scavenging and hydrogen peroxide decomposition performances and can thus neutralize tumor acidity, attenuate tumor hypoxia, and suppress lactate production upon intratumoral administration. Consequently, CCaP CSs treatment can activate potent antitumor immunity and thus significantly enhance the therapeutic potency of coloaded anti-programmed death-1 (anti-PD-1) antibodies in both murine subcutaneous CT26 and orthotopic 4T1 tumor xenografts. In addition, such CCaP CSs treatment also markedly reinforces the therapeutic potency of epidermal growth factor receptor expressing chimeric antigen receptor T (EGFR-CAR-T) cells toward a human triple-negative breast cancer xenograft by promoting their tumor infiltration and effector cytokine secretion. Therefore, this study highlights that chemical modulation of tumor acidity and hypoxia can collectively reverse tumor immunosuppression and thus significantly potentiate both immune checkpoint blockade and CAR-T cell immunotherapies toward solid tumors.
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