Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype. At present, TNBC patients do not have an approved targeted therapy. Therefore, patients primarily depend on forceful treatment of systemic chemotherapy that has inevitable adverse effects, shows poor therapeutic outcomes, leads to high mortality rates, and advanced stage of TNBC patients remains very high. Hence, there is a need to develop effective targeted therapies for the TNBC patient population. Emphasizing the new nanotherapeutic approach in TNBC for combinational therapy could be an effective strategy.
Herein, we used the electrostatic assembly method to develop smart therapeutics with targeting ligand of hyaluronan (HA) for tumor photothermal treatment. Furthermore, we calculate the photothermal property and photothermal conversion efficiency under prominent irradiation. Then, we co-encapsulated the immuno molecues for to trigger immunne responses against the tumors. In vivo analysis of photoimmunotherapy efficacy of targeted therapy in mice models was done.
Encouragingly, therapeutics have selective receptor-targeted specific endocytic uptake of TNBC and incinerates the tumor under irridiation releasing tumor-associated antigens. Furthermore, co-encapsulated imiquimod (R837) immunoadjuvant molecules trigger strong immune response against post-phototherapy of tumor. Therefore, nanotherapeutics based photoimmunotherapy is an effective combined treatment for TNBC to protect the mice from cancer relapse and metastasis.
We conclude that results of smart therapeutics platform could serve as a new photoimmunotherapy modality for future clinical use. Combined cancer immunotherapy has the greatest potential for the treatment of cancer and prevention of future relapse by the activation of the immune system to recognize and kill tumor cells.
The authors.
Has not received any funding.
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.