Alpha radionuclide-chelated radioimmunotherapy promoters enable local radiotherapy/chemodynamic therapy to discourage cancer progression

BACKGROUND: Astatine-211 is an α-emitter with high-energy α-ray and high cytotoxicity for cancer cells. However, the targeted alpha therapy (TAT) also suffers from insufficient systematic immune activation, resulting in tumor metastasis and relapse. Combined immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) with chemodynamic therapy (CDT) could boost antitumor immunity, which may magnify the immune responses of TAT. This study aims to discourage tumor metastasis and relapse by tri-model TAT-CDT-ICB strategy. METHODS: We successfully designed Mn-based radioimmunotherapy promoters ((211)At-ATE-MnO(2)-BSA), which are consisting of (211)At, MnO(2) and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The efficacy of (211)At-ATE-MnO(2)-BSA was studied as monotherapy or in combination with anti-PD-L1 in both metastatic and relapse models. The immune effects of radioimmunotherapy promoters on cytotoxic T lymphocytes and dendritic cells (DCs) were analyzed by flow cytometry. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunofluorescence were used to explore the underlying mechanism. RESULTS: Such radioimmunotherapy promoters could not only enhance the therapeutic outcomes of TAT and CDT, but also induce robust anti-cancer immune activity by activating dendritic cells. More intriguingly, (211)At-ATE-MnO(2)-BSA could effectively suppress the growths of primary tumors and distant tumors when combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors. CONCLUSIONS: The tri-model TAT-CDT-ICB strategy provides a long-term immunological memory, which can protect against tumor rechallenge after eliminating original tumors. Therefore, this work presents a novel approach for TAT-CDT-ICB tri-modal cancer therapy with repressed metastasis and relapse in clinics. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40824-022-00290-6.