Nining Guo

Abstract Cancer vaccines have been actively pursued to bolster antitumor immunity. Here, we designed nanoscale metal-organic frameworks (nMOFs) as locally activable immunotherapeutics to release danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and tumor antigens and deliver pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) for in situ personalized cancer vaccination.

An effective, nontoxic, tumor-specific immunotherapy is the ultimate goal in the battle against cancer, especially the metastatic disease. Checkpoint blockade-based immunotherapies have been shown to be extraordinarily effective but benefit only the minority of patients whose tumors have been pre-infiltrated by T cells.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) can destroy local tumors and minimize normal tissue damage, but is ineffective at eliminating metastases. Checkpoint blockade immunotherapy has enjoyed recent success in the clinic, but only elicits limited rates of systemic antitumor response for most cancers due to insufficient activation of the host immune system.