October
30,
2020
Nanoparticle Engineering for Chemoimmunotherapy and Systemic Gene DeliveryThis talk will highlight our recent efforts to develop new drug delivery systems for two applications: chemoimmunotherapy and systemic gene delivery. The first part will showcase chemotherapeutic delivery as an adjuvant of immune checkpoint blockade therapy. Immune checkpoint blockade aims to rekindle host immune responses against cancer by interfering with cellular interactions that suppress cytotoxic T-cell activities. However, a critical limitation of immune checkpoint inhibition is that it currently benefits only a fraction of patients with tumors pre-infiltrated by T cells (“hot” tumors). “Cold” tumors, which lacks adequate pre-existing T-cell immune responses, remain refractory to immune checkpoint inhibitors. To overcome this challenge, we deliver anti-cancer drugs in a sustained manner to generate tumor neoantigens in situ while exploiting drug carriers’ adjuvanticity to stimulate antigen-presenting cells.
In the second part, I will introduce a new carrier of nucleic acid therapeutics, called Nanosac, a non-cationic soft polyphenol nanocapsule. For systemic delivery of nucleic acids to solid tumors, the carrier must circulate stably, extravasate and penetrate tumors, enter target cells, traffic to the intracellular destination, and release the payload. However, existing gene carriers relying on cationic materials fall short of these requirements by a large margin. I will present key features of Nanosac and discuss how Nanosac effectively overcomes the limitations of cationic carriers to deliver siRNA to tumors by systemic administration.
This seminar will be held via Webex.
