Engineered Nanoparticle Mediated Vaccine Development for Immunoprevention of Cancer

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 August 2023) | Viewed by 8798

Special Issue Editors

Department of Medicine, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA
Interests: nanoparticles; photothermal therapy; extracellular vesicles; cancer immunotherapies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5484, USA
Interests: nano-immunotherapies; nanoparticles; molecular imaging
Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Interests: nanomedicine; cancer immunotherapies; gene therapies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Vaccines are the most efficient tools in defense against malignancies such as cancer and infectious diseases. However, most vaccines suffer from poor immunogenicity, stability, and need for multi-dose vaccine injections to elicit robust and long-lasting immune effects. Recent vaccine developments utilizing nanoparticles (such as lipid nanoparticles) for the global control of the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a renewed interest in these technologies. The use of nanosized particles for vaccine development imparted high immunogenicity, targetability, stability and sustained/controlled release properties that enhance the host’s immune response.

Several nanoparticulate systems such as liposomes, polymers, micelles, virus like nanoparticles, and inorganic nanoparticles, to name a few, have been utilized for cancer vaccination strategies. Several factors such as size, shape, surface charge, route of administration, time in circulation, etc., of these nano-constructs determines the efficacy of the loaded immunological agents (vaccines). Cancer malignancies differ widely from each other in tumor antigen type and tumor microenvironment, which includes tumor resident and infiltrating immune cells. They are highly heterogenous within the same type of cancer (immune “hot” or “cold” tumors). For this reason, one-for-all design in the nanoparticle development to positively trigger immunogenicity will not work effectively for all types of cancer. A precise engineering of these systems by taking the tumor microenvironment and its immune status into consideration is of utmost importance. Engineering of nanoparticle design parameters will bring out a stable functional nanoplatform for cancer vaccine delivery.

This Special Issue, titled ‘Engineered Nanoparticle Mediated Vaccine Development for Immunoprevention of Cancer’, will aim to bring the reader’s attention to the innovative engineering strategies of nanoparticle systems to improve cancer vaccine delivery and efficacy.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. Engineering of nanoparticulate systems for efficient delivery of cancer vaccines;
  2. Immunomodulating nanoparticles design and validation;
  3. Nanoparticles design for enhanced targeted delivery;
  4. Nanoparticle system as an efficient cancer adjuvant;
  5. Design and validation of theranostic nanoparticles for cancer diagnosis and prevention.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Kondareddy Cherukula
Dr. Preethi Bala Balakrishnan
Dr. Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • nanoparticles
  • vaccines
  • nanotechnology
  • immune cell targeting
  • adjuvant
  • antigen
  • engineered nanoparticles

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Review

54 pages, 10654 KiB  
Review
Emerging Trends in Nano-Driven Immunotherapy for Treatment of Cancer
by Gayathri Kandasamy, Yugeshwaran Karuppasamy and Uma Maheswari Krishnan
Vaccines 2023, 11(2), 458; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11020458 - 16 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2639
Abstract
Despite advancements in the development of anticancer medications and therapies, cancer still has the greatest fatality rate due to a dismal prognosis. Traditional cancer therapies include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and targeted therapy. The conventional treatments have a number of shortcomings, such as a lack [...] Read more.
Despite advancements in the development of anticancer medications and therapies, cancer still has the greatest fatality rate due to a dismal prognosis. Traditional cancer therapies include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and targeted therapy. The conventional treatments have a number of shortcomings, such as a lack of selectivity, non-specific cytotoxicity, suboptimal drug delivery to tumour locations, and multi-drug resistance, which results in a less potent/ineffective therapeutic outcome. Cancer immunotherapy is an emerging and promising strategy to elicit a pronounced immune response against cancer. Immunotherapy stimulates the immune system with cancer-specific antigens or immune checkpoint inhibitors to overcome the immune suppressive tumour microenvironment and kill the cancer cells. However, delivery of the antigen or immune checkpoint inhibitors and activation of the immune response need to circumvent the issues pertaining to short lifetimes and effect times, as well as adverse effects associated with off-targeting, suboptimal, or hyperactivation of the immune system. Additional challenges posed by the tumour suppressive microenvironment are less tumour immunogenicity and the inhibition of effector T cells. The evolution of nanotechnology in recent years has paved the way for improving treatment efficacy by facilitating site-specific and sustained delivery of the therapeutic moiety to elicit a robust immune response. The amenability of nanoparticles towards surface functionalization and tuneable physicochemical properties, size, shape, and surfaces charge have been successfully harnessed for immunotherapy, as well as combination therapy, against cancer. In this review, we have summarized the recent advancements made in choosing different nanomaterial combinations and their modifications made to enable their interaction with different molecular and cellular targets for efficient immunotherapy. This review also highlights recent trends in immunotherapy strategies to be used independently, as well as in combination, for the destruction of cancer cells, as well as prevent metastasis and recurrence. Full article
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39 pages, 7120 KiB  
Review
Canvassing Prospects of Glyco-Nanovaccines for Developing Cross-Presentation Mediated Anti-Tumor Immunotherapy
by Amina I. Makandar, Mannat Jain, Eiji Yuba, Gautam Sethi and Rajesh Kumar Gupta
Vaccines 2022, 10(12), 2049; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10122049 - 30 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2286
Abstract
In view of the severe downsides of conventional cancer therapies, the quest of developing alternative strategies still remains of critical importance. In this regard, antigen cross-presentation, usually employed by dendritic cells (DCs), has been recognized as a potential solution to overcome the present [...] Read more.
In view of the severe downsides of conventional cancer therapies, the quest of developing alternative strategies still remains of critical importance. In this regard, antigen cross-presentation, usually employed by dendritic cells (DCs), has been recognized as a potential solution to overcome the present impasse in anti-cancer therapeutic strategies. It has been established that an elevated cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response against cancer cells can be achieved by targeting receptors expressed on DCs with specific ligands. Glycans are known to serve as ligands for C-type lectin receptors (CLRs) expressed on DCs, and are also known to act as a tumor-associated antigen (TAA), and, thus, can be harnessed as a potential immunotherapeutic target. In this scenario, integrating the knowledge of cross-presentation and glycan-conjugated nanovaccines can help us to develop so called ‘glyco-nanovaccines’ (GNVs) for targeting DCs. Here, we briefly review and analyze the potential of GNVs as the next-generation anti-tumor immunotherapy. We have compared different antigen-presenting cells (APCs) for their ability to cross-present antigens and described the potential nanocarriers for tumor antigen cross-presentation. Further, we discuss the role of glycans in targeting of DCs, the immune response due to pathogens, and imitative approaches, along with parameters, strategies, and challenges involved in cross-presentation-based GNVs for cancer immunotherapy. It is known that the effectiveness of GNVs in eradicating tumors by inducing strong CTL response in the tumor microenvironment (TME) has been largely hindered by tumor glycosylation and the expression of different lectin receptors (such as galectins) by cancer cells. Tumor glycan signatures can be sensed by a variety of lectins expressed on immune cells and mediate the immune suppression which, in turn, facilitates immune evasion. Therefore, a sound understanding of the glycan language of cancer cells, and glycan–lectin interaction between the cancer cells and immune cells, would help in strategically designing the next-generation GNVs for anti-tumor immunotherapy. Full article
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26 pages, 2389 KiB  
Review
Advances in Nanotechnology for Cancer Immunoprevention and Immunotherapy: A Review
by Navami Prabhakar Koyande, Rupali Srivastava, Ananya Padmakumar and Aravind Kumar Rengan
Vaccines 2022, 10(10), 1727; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10101727 - 16 Oct 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2914
Abstract
One of the most effective cancer therapies, cancer immunotherapy has produced outstanding outcomes in the field of cancer treatment. However, the cost is excessive, which limits its applicability. A smart way to address this issue would be to apply the knowledge gained through [...] Read more.
One of the most effective cancer therapies, cancer immunotherapy has produced outstanding outcomes in the field of cancer treatment. However, the cost is excessive, which limits its applicability. A smart way to address this issue would be to apply the knowledge gained through immunotherapy to develop strategies for the immunoprevention of cancer. The use of cancer vaccines is one of the most popular methods of immunoprevention. This paper reviews the technologies and processes that support the advantages of cancer immunoprevention over traditional cancer immunotherapies. Nanoparticle drug delivery systems and nanoparticle-based nano-vaccines have been employed in the past for cancer immunotherapy. This paper outlines numerous immunoprevention strategies and how nanotechnology can be applied in immunoprevention. To comprehend the non-clinical and clinical evaluation of these cancer vaccines through clinical studies is essential for acceptance of the vaccines. Full article
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