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Updated: Jul 4, 2025

Paramyxoviruses for Tumor-targeted Immunomodulation: Design and Evaluation Ex Vivo
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Paramyxoviruses for Tumor-targeted Immunomodulation: Design and Evaluation Ex Vivo

Published on: January 7, 2019

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Glycan-costumed virus-like particles promote type 1 anti-tumor immunity

Valerie Lensch1, Adele Gabba1, Robert Hincapie2

  • 1Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|January 31, 2024
PubMed

Insights

Engineered virus-like particles (VLPs) with specific glycan coatings effectively activate dendritic cells (DCs) to induce potent tumor-specific T cell immunity, inhibiting melanoma growth in mice.

Area of Science:

  • Immunology
  • Vaccinology
  • Glycobiology

Background:

  • Cancer vaccine development requires strategies to induce effective tumor-specific cellular immunity via dendritic cell (DC) activation.
  • Pathogen pattern recognition receptors, including DC lectins and Toll-like Receptors (TLRs), critically shape T cell-mediated immunity.
  • Targeted activation of specific DC signaling pathways is essential for eliciting type 1 cellular immunity against tumors.

Approach:

  • Engineered glycan-costumed virus-like particles (VLPs) to deliver programmable peptide antigens for cancer immunotherapy.
  • VLPs were designed to encapsulate TLR7 agonists and decorated with a mannose-derived ligand targeting the DC-SIGN lectin.
  • Evaluated the capacity of these modified VLPs to induce DC activation and tumor-specific T cell responses in vivo.

Key Points:

  • VLPs decorated with a DC-SIGN ligand and TLR7 agonists induced robust DC activation and type 1 cellular immunity.
  • VLPs lacking the DC-SIGN ligand failed to promote DC-mediated anti-tumor immunity.
  • Vaccination with glycan-costumed VLPs generated tumor antigen-specific Th1 CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.

Conclusions:

  • Glycan-costumed VLPs effectively reprogram DC function to elicit anti-tumor immune responses.
  • These engineered VLPs demonstrated efficacy in inhibiting tumor growth in a murine melanoma model.
  • Lectin-driven immune reprogramming using VLPs offers a promising framework for advancing cancer immunotherapies.

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