Designing next-generation immune cell therapies with nanomaterials

Immune Cellular Therapies (ICT) have revolutionized the treatment of blood cancer and are beginning to show positive outcomes in treating solid tumors. Despite these successes, ICT faces significant challenges, including tumor accessibility, lengthy manufacturing turnaround, and limited long-term effectiveness. Recent advancements in nanomaterials, particularly nanoparticles, have offered promising solutions to these issues. This perspective introduces the current ICT manufacturing pipeline with a focus on solid tumors and showcases recent nanomaterial-mediated practices to enhance ICT. These efforts include the use of cell-targeting magnetic nanoparticles for non-invasive target identification, lipid nanoparticles for in vivo immune cell stimulation, as well as nanoparticle-mediated gene editing and cytokine delivery to enhance immune cell fitness. By better integrating nanoparticles into the design and manufacturing pipelines, we envision that the next generation of ICT could be faster, more efficient, and capable of targeting a broad spectrum of cancers and inflammatory diseases.