Nanomedicine-mediated immunogenic cell death and its combination with immune checkpoint blockade therapy

Abstract

Cancer immunotherapies, which train the natural immune system to specifically kill tumor cells while sparing the healthy cells, have helped revolutionize cancer treatments and demonstrated promising clinical therapeutic benefits for decades. However, the therapeutic outcome of immunotherapies, even for the most successful immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, remains unsatisfactory in the clinical practice, mainly due to the low immunogenicity of solid tumors and its immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Notably, several cancer treatment modalities, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and phototherapy, have been revealed to evoke tumor immunogenicity and reverse immunosuppressive TME via inducing immunogenic cell death (ICD) of tumor cells, which synergistically sensitized tumors to ICB therapy. Nanomedicines have been extensively applied to augment ICD-inducing treatment modalities and potentiate ICB therapeutic efficacy therapy due to the opportune convergence of immunotherapy and nanotechnology. Here, we discuss the recent advances in nanomedicine-mediated ICD and its combination with ICB therapy.