Browsing by Author "Evans, Emily Reiser"

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    Gold Nanovaccine Strategies for Cancer Immunotherapy
    (2018-04-18) Evans, Emily Reiser; Drezek, Rebekah
    Gold nanoparticles have excellent properties for cancer therapeutics because their tunable size and surface chemistry make them customizable for many applications. For immunotherapy applications in particular, we can leverage their natural biodistribution to the spleen and immune cells for delivering peptide antigen vaccines or tune their optical properties for photothermal therapy to ablate tumors, which results in tumor antigen circulation and an in situ vaccination effect. Our group has demonstrated the potential of gold nanoparticles to elicit systemic, anti-tumor immunity through several iterations of particle design, characterization, and in vivo testing. However, most of the animal testing was done using a B16-OVA model, which is less clinically relevant due to the transgene antigen inserted for vaccination and tumor detection. My work builds upon the strong foundation of proof-of-concept vaccination strategies and examines the use of these gold nanoparticle platforms for cancer immunotherapy applications in a more clinically relevant tumor model. Though many hurdles remain for the first gold nanoparticles to reach FDA approval, this work demonstrates the progression of gold nanoparticle-enabled cancer immunotherapy toward that end and illustrates novel immunotherapeutic outcomes and combinations that may inform future progress toward identifying a clinically viable gold nanoparticle cancer immunotherapy strategy.
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    Metallic nanoparticles for cancer immunotherapy
    (Elsevier, 2018) Evans, Emily Reiser; Bugga, Pallavi; Asthana, Vishwaratn; Drezek, Rebekah; Bioengineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering
    Cancer immunotherapy, or the utilization of the body’s immune system to attack tumor cells, has gained prominence over the past few decades as a viable cancer treatment strategy. Recently approved immunotherapeutics have conferred remission upon patients with previously bleak outcomes and have expanded the number of tools available to treat cancer. Nanoparticles – including polymeric, liposomal, and metallic formulations – naturally traffic to the spleen and lymph organs and the relevant immune cells therein, making them good candidates for delivery of immunotherapeutic agents. Metallic nanoparticle formulations, in particular, are advantageous because of their potential for dense surface functionalizationand their capability for optical or heat-based therapeutic methods. Many research groups have investigated the potential of nanoparticle-mediated delivery platforms to improve the efficacy of immunotherapies. Despite the significant preclinical successes demonstrated by many of these platforms over the last twenty years, only a few metallic nanoparticles have successfully entered clinical trials with none achieving FDA approval for cancer therapy. In this review, we will discuss preclinical research and clinical trials involving metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) for cancer immunotherapy applications and discuss the potential for clinical translation of MNPs.