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Photodynamic Therapy Derived Personalized Whole Cell Tumor Vaccine Prevents Postsurgery Tumor Recurrence and

Chunyu Yang1, Yitong Jiang2, Kaixin Zhang1

  • 1Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.

Small (Weinheim an Der Bergstrasse, Germany)
|February 11, 2024
PubMed

Insights

A novel photodynamic therapy (PDT) method creates personalized tumor vaccines (TVs) from patient tissues, bypassing antigen identification. This approach effectively suppresses tumor recurrence and metastasis by inducing potent immune responses.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Immunology
  • Biomedical Engineering

Background:

  • Traditional tumor-specific antigen (TSA) identification for vaccine fabrication is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
  • Photodynamic therapy (PDT) offers potential for cancer treatment but faces challenges with light penetration.
  • Personalized immunotherapy requires efficient and accessible methods for vaccine development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop a versatile, photodynamic therapy (PDT)-based method for constructing whole-tumor antigen tumor vaccines (TVs) from resected tumor tissues.
  • To enable personalized immunotherapy by bypassing the need for identifying specific tumor antigens (TSAs).
  • To investigate the efficacy of the developed TV in suppressing postsurgery tumor recurrence and metastasis.

Main Methods:

  • Fabrication of mucoadhesive nanoparticles containing a photosensitizer.
  • Co-incubation of nanoparticles with tumor cells obtained from cytoreduction surgery.
  • Irradiation with a 405 nm laser to induce immunogenic cell death and TSA release.

Main Results:

  • The PDT-based method successfully induced potent immunogenic cell death in cancer cells.
  • The prepared tumor vaccines (TVs) released tumor-specific antigens (TSAs), activating robust immune responses.
  • The TVs demonstrated efficient suppression of postsurgery tumor recurrence and metastasis.
  • The TVs showed synergistic effects when combined with immunoadjuvants, chemotherapeutics, and immune checkpoint blockers.

Conclusions:

  • A versatile PDT-based strategy enables the efficient fabrication of personalized whole-cell tumor vaccines, overcoming limitations of traditional methods.
  • This approach facilitates the clinical translation of PDT by providing a method for vaccine generation from resected tumor tissue.
  • The developed tumor vaccines (TVs) offer a promising platform for personalized immunotherapy, alone or in combination therapies.
Keywords:
cancer immunotherapyimmunogenic cell death (ICD)photodynamic therapytumor recurrence and metastasiswhole cell tumor vaccine

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