Immunotherapy involves harnessing the power of the body’s immune system to fight against cancer cells. Researchers in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering have found a way to revamp a treatment procedure into a groundbreaking practice.
Rong Tong, associate professor in chemical engineering, has teamed up with Wenjun "Rebecca" Cai, associate professor in materials science and engineering, to explore a cancer immunotherapy treatment that has long been of interest to researchers. In their newly published article in the journal Science Advances, Tong and Cai detailed their approach, which involves activating the immune cells in the body and reprogramming them to attack and destroy the cancer cells. This therapeutic method is frequently implemented with the protein cytokine. Cytokines are small protein molecules that act as intercellular biochemical messengers and are released by the body's immune cells to coordinate their response.
Tong and Cai, in collaboration with chemical engineering and materials science and engineering graduate students, have developed an innovative approach to employ cytokine proteins as a potential immunotherapy treatment. Their technique ensures that the immune cell stimulating cytokines effectively localize within the tumors for weeks while preserving the cytokine’s structure and reactivity levels.
The research team’s goal is to find a balance between killing cancer cells in the body while sparing healthy cells.
To accomplish this goal, Tong and his students used their expertise to create specialized particles with distinctive sizes that help determine where the drug is going. These microparticles are designed to stay within the tumor environment after being injected into the body. Cai and her students worked on measuring these particles’ surface properties.
To ensure successful drug delivery, Tong and his chemical engineering students designed a novel strategy that:
- Anchors cytokines to these new microparticles, limiting the harm of cytokines to healthy cells
- Allows the newly particle-anchored cytokines to jump-start immune systems and recruit immune cells to attack cancer cells
The next step in the process involves combining the new, localized cytokine therapy method with commercially available, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved checkpoint blockade antibodies, which reactivate the tumor immune cells that have been silenced so they can fight back the cancer cells.
Combining the checkpoint antibodies with the particle-anchored cytokine proved to successfully eliminate many tumors in their study.
