Antigen-capturing nanoparticles improve the abscopal effect and cancer immunotherapy

Immunotherapy holds tremendous promise for improving cancer treatment(1). Administering radiotherapy with immunotherapy has been shown to improve immune responses and can elicit an “abscopal effect”(2). Unfortunately, response rates for this strategy remain low(3). Herein, we report an improved cancer immunotherapy approach that utilizes antigen-capturing nanoparticles (AC-NPs). We engineered several AC-NPs formulations and demonstrated that the set of protein antigens captured by each AC-NP formulation is dependent upon NP surface properties. We showed that AC-NPs deliver tumor specific proteins to antigen-presenting cells and significantly improve the efficacy of αPD-1 treatment using the B16F10 melanoma model, generating up to 20% cure rate as compared to 0% without AC-NPs. Mechanistic studies revealed that AC-NPs induced an expansion of CD8(+) cytotoxic T cells and increased both CD4(+)/T(reg) and CD8(+)/T(reg) ratios. Our work presents a novel strategy for improving cancer immunotherapy with nanotechnology.