Advanced Healthcare Materials2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Raza F, Zafar H, Zhang S, Kamal Z, Su J, Yuan W-E, Qiu M.
Cancer immunotherapy is limited by the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment, patient heterogeneity, poor delivery of immunotherapeutics, and systemic immunotoxicity. Cell membrane-derived biomimetic nanoparticles may improve delivery and biodistribution, enhance targeting and immune stimulation, and overcome…
Read the article →Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Kim J, Eygeris Y, Gupta M, Sahay G.
mRNA vaccines are promising but naked mRNA is fragile, susceptible to enzymatic degradation, poorly taken up by cells due to electrostatic repulsion, and can trigger innate immune responses. Self-assembly offers a versatile approach to prepare delivery vehicles with customisable properties. The review discusses…
Read the article →Bioactive Materials2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Muyue Yang, Jipeng Li, Ping Gu, Xianqun Fan
Tumour microenvironment (TME) modulation is a promising strategy in cancer immunotherapy, but conventional immunotherapeutic agents suffer from limited drug retention in the TME, severe adverse events, and low response rates. Nanoparticles can prolong retention, enable targeted delivery to TME components, and convert…
Read the article →Nature Reviews Materials2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Hou X, Zaks T, Langer R, Dong Y
mRNA has therapeutic potential for vaccines, protein replacement, cancer immunotherapy, cellular reprogramming, and genome editing, but it requires safe, effective, and stable delivery systems to protect it from degradation and enable cellular uptake and mRNA release. Lipid nanoparticles have entered the clinic for…
Read the article →Pharmaceutics2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Zak Mm, Zangi L
mRNA therapeutics are limited by innate immune activation, rapid RNase degradation, and inefficient delivery to target organs. Although LNPs are the only clinically approved RNA therapeutic carriers, most systemically delivered LNPs accumulate in the liver, so organ-specific delivery remains a major barrier for…
Read the article →Molecules2021ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Wan, Z.; Zheng, R.; Moharil, P.; Liu, Y.; Chen, J.; Sun, R.; Song, X.; Ao, Q
Cancer immunotherapy can produce durable clinical responses, but systemic delivery of immunostimulatory agents is limited by short half-lives, off-target toxicities (e.g., cytokine release syndrome), low response rates (10–30%), and poor efficacy in solid tumours. Polymeric micelles offer a biocompatible, modifiable…
Read the article →Angewandte Chemie International Edition2020ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Shuangqian Yan, Zichao Luo, Zhenglin Li, Yu Wang, Jun Tao, Changyang Gong, Xiaogang Liu
Cancer immunotherapy has improved clinical outcomes, but few patients show adequate response rates and long-term responses, and systemic side effects remain common due to the dynamic nature of the immune system. Biomaterial-assisted immunotherapy is a promising approach to improve therapeutic efficacy and reduce side…
Read the article →PNAS* (*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*)2020ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Stephany Y. Tzeng, Kisha K. Patel, David R. Wilson, Randall A. Meyer, Kelly R. Rhodes, Jordan J. Green
Cancer immunotherapy has shown clinical success but remains limited by low response rates, high cost, and the need for ex vivo cell manipulation or prior knowledge of patient-specific tumour antigens. A broadly applicable, antigen-agnostic strategy that genetically reprograms tumour cells in situ—without ex vivo…
Read the article →ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces2020ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Kwang-Soo Kim, Jun-Hyeok Han, Seung Hee Choi, Hae-Yun Jung, Joo Dong Park, Hee-Jung An, Seong-Eun Kim, Dong-Hyun Kim, Junsang Doh, Dong Keun Han, Ik-Hwan Kim, Wooram Park, Kyung-Soon Park
Natural killer (NK) cells are promising for cancer immunotherapy due to their lower risk of cytokine storm and graft-versus-host disease compared to T cell therapies. However, existing NK cell activation strategies—genetic engineering and cytokine treatment—are inefficient, expensive, and involve complex processing…
Read the article →Molecular Therapy2020ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Xiaojing Shi, Qinqin Cheng, Tianling Hou, Menglu Han, Goar Smbatyan, Julie E. Lang, Alan L. Epstein, Heinz-Josef Lenz, Yong Zhang
Exosomes are nanosized membranous vesicles with unique properties (abundant membrane proteins, high biocompatibility, low immunogenicity) that make them attractive for therapeutic development. While exosomes have been studied as drug delivery vehicles, fewer studies have focused on engineering exosome surface…
Read the article →Journal of Controlled Release2020ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Nour Shobaki, Yusuke Sato, Yuichi Suzuki, Nana Okabe, Hideyoshi Harashima
Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) are largely M2-like and promote tumour growth, angiogenesis, metastasis, and immune suppression. There is a need for systemic delivery systems that can target TAMs and manipulate their pro-tumour functions with siRNA for cancer immunotherapy. Optimised CL4H6-LNPs had 90% siRNA…
Read the article →Science Translational Medicine2020ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Xueguang Lu, Lei Miao, Wenting Gao, Ziqi Chen, Kevin J. Mchugh, Yehui Sun, Zachary Tochka, Stephanie Tomasic, Kaitlyn Sadtler, Alain Hyacinthe, Yuxuan Huang, Tyler Graf, Quanyin Hu, Morteza Sarmadi, Robert Langer, Daniel G. Anderson, Ana Jaklenec
STING agonists require frequent intratumoral injections over months to achieve efficacy, leading to poor patient adherence, repeated disruption of the tumour microenvironment, increased metastasis risk, and limited applicability to hard-to-reach tumours. A single-injection delivery system that mimics multiple dosing…
Read the article →International Immunopharmacology2020ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Hashemi V, Farhadi S, Ghasemi Chaleshtari M, Et Al.
Dendritic cell (DC)-based cancer immunotherapy has shown impressive outcomes, including the first FDA-approved anti-cancer vaccine, but clinical application faces challenges such as limited durable responses, antigen selection issues, and immunosuppressive tumour microenvironments. Nanoparticles (NPs) are promising…
Read the article →Frontiers in Chemistry2020ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Guevara Ml, Persano F, Persano S
mRNA is a flexible and potentially safer cancer immunotherapy platform, but its clinical use has been limited by extracellular instability, poor cellular uptake, and inefficient endosomal escape. Lipid nanoparticles have become the most advanced non-viral delivery system for mRNA, enabling therapeutic vaccines…
Read the article →Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews2020ReviewDrug Delivery
Nina Filipczak, Jiayi Pan, Satya Siva Kishan Yalamarty, Vladimir P. Torchilin
Liposomes remain an important nano-sized drug delivery system because of their biomimetic bilayer, ease of preparation, and biocompatibility, but clinical translation is still limited by reproducibility, scale-up, stability, and payload-specific barriers. The review updates recent advances in liposome preparation…
Read the article →Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.2019ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Rachel S. Riley, Carl H. June, Robert Langer, Michael J. Mitchell.
Immunotherapy has become powerful but broad implementation limited by inability to control immune modulation; serious adverse effects including autoimmunity, nonspecific inflammation. Need delivery technologies to improve efficacy and safety. Numbers.
Read the article →Cancer Letters2019ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Mukalel Aj, Riley Rs, Zhang R, Mitchell Mj.
Nucleic acid therapeutics—DNA, mRNA, and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing systems—hold significant potential for cancer immunotherapy but face major delivery barriers, including rapid in vivo degradation, poor cellular uptake, required nuclear entry, and toxicity in healthy tissues. Nanoparticle delivery systems are being…
Read the article →PNAS2018ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Colin J. Mckinlay, Nancy L. Benner, Ole A. Haabeth, Robert M. Waymouth, Paul A. Wender
Efficient mRNA delivery to lymphocytes remains a major unmet need for immunotherapy and vaccinology. Current methods rely largely on physical transfection such as electroporation, which is ex vivo, costly, and inefficient; chemical vectors generally achieve low lymphocyte mRNA transfection, especially in vivo. Lead…
Read the article →ACS Applied Bio Materials (Just Accepted Manuscript)2018ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Chao Wang, Pengfei Sun, Gaina Wang, Pengcheng Yuan, Rongcui Jiang, Wenjun Wang, Wei Huang, Quli Fan
Dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccines require efficient antigen delivery, but free ovalbumin (OVA) is poorly taken up by DCs and is often degraded, sequestered, or exocytosed. Existing OVA delivery systems often suffer from low loading capacity (<10%), lack of imaging ability, or chemical modification that can impair…
Read the article →Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)2018ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Elana Ben-Akiva, Kelly R. Rhodes, Randall A. Meyer, Jordan J. Green
Artificial antigen-presenting cells (aAPCs) are promising for immune modulation, and anisotropic (ellipsoidal) particles have shown improved T-cell stimulation over spherical particles. However, widely used methods for generating anisotropic particles, such as thin-film stretching, can be difficult to implement…
Read the article →International Journal of Pharmaceutics2018ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Tran Th, Tran Ttp, Nguyen Ht, Phung Cd, Jeong J-H, Stenzel Mh, Jin Sg, Yong Cs, Truong Dh, Kim Jo.
Dendritic cell (DC)-based cancer immunotherapy is promising but limited by poor antigen immunogenicity, weak stability, and short in vivo half-life. Nanotechnology can protect antigens and adjuvants from premature degradation, enhance delivery to DCs, and improve therapeutic T cell responses. This review summarises…
Read the article →Nature Communications2017ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Daniela Schmid, Chun Gwon Park, Christina A. Hartl, Nikita Subedi, Adam N. Cartwright, Regina Bou Puerto, Yiran Zheng, James Maiarana, Gordon J. Freeman, Kai W. Wucherpfennig, Darrell J. Irvine, Michael S. Goldberg
Systemic immune stimulation for cancer immunotherapy is associated with autoimmune-type pathologies, as the doses required to break immune tolerance can invoke undesired host-vs.-host effects. Targeting endogenous immune cell subsets in the circulation—which actively migrate into tumours—could concentrate…
Read the article →Biomaterials2017ResearchNon-viral Gene Delivery
Yoshizaki Y, Yuba E, Sakaguchi N, Koiwai K, Harada A, Kono K
Efficient cancer vaccine carriers need both antigen delivery to dendritic cells (DCs) and DC activation. Previous pH-sensitive polymer-modified liposomes delivered antigen to DC cytosol but had limited adjuvant potency, and combining cationic lipid TRX with MPLA reduced antitumor effects, suggesting a need for…
Read the article →Nature Reviews Materials2017ReviewNon-viral Gene Delivery
Khalid A. Hajj And Kathryn A. Whitehead
mRNA therapeutics have enormous potential for vaccines, cancer immunotherapy, protein replacement, and gene editing, but widespread clinical application is limited by the lack of safe and effective delivery vehicles. Naked mRNA is large (~10⁵–10⁶ Da), densely negatively charged, and rapidly degraded by nucleases; its…
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