The following study was conducted by Scientists from Division of Pharmaceutical Biosciences and Digital Precision Cancer Medicine Flagship (iCAN); Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) at University of Helsinki, Finland; University of Eastern Finland; Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Naples University, Naples, Italy.
Scientists designed a relatively unique nanovaccine termed as “ExtraCRAd therapeutic platform”, developed with synergistic association of oncolytic viral particles and cancer cell membrane molecules. Investigations established that nanovaccine displayed remarkable ability in controlling the disease patterns as a preventive and therapeutic vaccination strategy.
Nature Communications Volume 10, Article number: 5747 (2019)
Artificially Cloaked Viral Nanovaccine for Cancer Immunotherapy
Abstract
Virus-based cancer vaccines are nowadays considered an interesting approach in the field of cancer immunotherapy, despite the observation that the majority of the immune responses they elicit are against the virus and not against the tumor. In contrast, targeting tumor associated antigens is effective, however the identification of these antigens remains challenging. Here, we describe ExtraCRAd, a multi-vaccination strategy focused on an oncolytic virus artificially wrapped with tumor cancer membranes carrying tumor antigens. We demonstrate that ExtraCRAd displays increased infectivity and oncolytic effect in vitro and in vivo. We show that this nanoparticle platform controls the growth of aggressive melanoma and lung tumors in vivo both in preventive and therapeutic setting, creating a highly specific anti-cancer immune response. In conclusion, ExtraCRAd might serve as the next generation of personalized cancer vaccines with enhanced features over standard vaccination regimens, representing an alternative way to target cancer.
Source:
Nature Communications.
URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13744-8
Citation:
Fusciello, M., Fontana, F., Tähtinen, S. et al. Artificially cloaked viral nanovaccine for cancer immunotherapy. Nat Commun 10, 5747 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13744-8.
