STING-Activating Polymer-Drug Conjugates for Cancer Immunotherapy

The stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway links innate and adaptive antitumor immunity and therefore plays an important role in cancer immune surveillance. This has prompted widespread development of STING agonists for cancer immunotherapy, but pharmacological barriers continue to limit the clinical impact of STING agonists and motivate the development of drug delivery systems to improve their efficacy and/or safety. We developed SAPCon, a STING-activating polymer-drug conjugate platform based on strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition of a novel dimeric amidobenzimidazole (diABZI) STING prodrug to hydrophilic poly(dimethylacrylamide-co-azido-ethylmethacrylate) polymer chains through a cathepsin B-responsive linker to increase circulation time and enable passive tumor accumulation. We found that intravenously administered SAPCon accumulated at tumor sites, where it was endocytosed by tumor-associated myeloid cells, resulting in increased STING activation in the tumor tissue. Consequently, SAPCon promoted an immunogenic tumor microenvironment characterized by increased frequency of activated macrophages and dendritic cells and improved infiltration of CD8⁺ T cells, resulting in inhibition of tumor growth, prolonged survival, and enhanced response to anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade in orthotopic breast cancer models. Collectively, these studies position SAPCon as a modular and programmable platform for improving the efficacy of systemically administered STING agonists for cancer immunotherapy.