PLGA from PolySciTech used in the development of nanoparticle-based cancer immunotherapy treatment

 

An attractive target to treat cancer is to biochemically instruct the human body to mount an immune response against the cancer. This has significant advantages over conventional chemotherapy, which can indiscriminantly harm normal cells, as well as surgical and radiological procedures in which some portion of the cancer may remain and continue to grow. Recently, researchers at Korea University, and Korea Institute of Science and Technology used PLGA (AP081) from PolySciTech (www.polyscitech.com) to generate nanoparticles to control immunogenic cell death of cancer. This research holds promise to improve therapies against this disease. Read more: Choi, Yongwhan, Hong Yeol Yoon, Jeongrae Kim, Suah Yang, Jaewan Lee, Ji Woong Choi, Yujeong Moon et al. "Doxorubicin-Loaded PLGA Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy: Molecular Weight Effect of PLGA in Doxorubicin Release for Controlling Immunogenic Cell Death." Pharmaceutics 12, no. 12 (2020): 1165. https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4923/12/12/1165

“Direct local delivery of immunogenic cell death (ICD) inducers to a tumor site is an attractive approach for leading ICD effectively, due to enabling the concentrated delivery of ICD inducers to the tumor site. Herein, we prepared doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs) using different molecular weight PLGA (7000 g/mol and 12,000 g/mol), showing different drug release kinetics. The different release kinetics of DOX might differently stimulate a tumor cell-specific immune response by releasing damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), resulting in showing a different antitumor response in the living body. DOX-PLGA7K NPs showed faster DOX release kinetics than DOX-PLGA12K NPs in the physiological condition. DOX-PLGA7K NPs and DOX-PLGA12K NPs were successfully taken up by the CT-26 tumor cells, subsequently showing different DOX localization times at the nucleus. Released DOX successfully lead to cytotoxicity and HMGB1 release in vitro. Although the DOX-PLGA7K NPs and DOX-PLGA12K NPs showed different sustained DOX release kinetics in vitro, tumor growth of the CT-26 tumor was similarly inhibited for 28 days post-direct tumor injection. Furthermore, the immunological memory effect was successfully established by the ICD-based tumor-specific immune responses, including DC maturation and tumor infiltration of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We expect that the controlled release of ICD-inducible chemotherapeutic agents, using different types of nanomedicines, can provide potential in precision cancer immunotherapy by controlling the tumor-specific immune responses, thus improving the therapeutic efficacy. Keywords: cancer immunotherapy; immunogenic cell death; nanomedicine; drug release”