Research Terms
This hydrogel vaccine implants in patients and can carry molecules that train immune cells to treat specific human diseases, such as cancer and infectious diseases. The vaccine is a type of immunotherapy, treatments focused on activating the immune system against cancer and other diseases. Researchers at the University of Florida have created a biocompatible hydrogel vaccine for immunotherapy that results in robust recruitment of different immune cell subsets and serves as a scaffold for interactions of these cells with an antigen loaded in the vaccine. The immune cells recruited within the hydrogel result in a large immune response against the target antigen. The response occurs throughout the body, including sites such as the brain, traditionally considered immune-privileged sites. This eliminates the cost and difficulty of training immune cells ex vivo associated with other immunotherapy modalities, while promoting immune cell viability, antigen uptake, and migration to provide a more efficient immune vaccine.
Immunotherapy vaccine for various cancers and illnesses that efficiently trains the immune system in vivo
The biocompatible nanocomposite hydrogel allows free passage of immune cells in and out of the gel in-situ. The hydrogel vaccine slowly releases a signaling ligand to recruit dendritic cells, NK cells and T cells into the hydrogel. The hydrogel effectively and non-aggressively introduces the antigen nanoparticle mRNA to the dendritic cells. The dendritic cells then present the antigen to the T cells to stimulate them against the antigen, allowing them to attack and kill the target cells within the body, such as tumor cells.
These sarcosine-loaded dendritic cells exhibit enhanced migration to local lymph nodes, increasing the stimulation and migration of T-cells for cancer treatment. Immunotherapy has become a popular approach to treat cancer in recent years. A particular approach is providing patients with a vaccine of their own dendritic cells that presents a particular tumor antigen. University of Florida researchers have developed dendritic cells loaded intracellularly with sarcosine. Sarcosine, also known as N-methylglycine, is a metabolite of an amino acid found naturally in biological tissues; it is easily acquired from a variety of companies. The dendritic cells containing sarcosine have shown to significantly improve dendritic cell migration, in turn increasing stimulation of an immune response, resulting in the tumor being attacked and killed. Using dendritic cells for tumor treatment has already been approved by the FDA in prostate cancer and is currently in phase III clinical trials for other forms of cancers.
Sarcosine-loaded dendritic cells used for adoptive immunotherapy increases immune response and potentially survival rate of cancer patients
Dendritic cells act as antigen presenting cells (APCs), presenting antigens to T-cell receptors. One immunotherapy approach to treating cancer provides patients with a vaccine of their own dendritic cells loaded with tumor antigens. Those dendritic cells migrate to a lymph node where they simulate T cells to generate an immune response, allowing the cells to express the target antigen that results in tumor killing. Enhancing that migration of dendritic cells to the local lymph node is critical for efficacy of this treatment strategy. University of Florida researchers have discovered that loading those dendritic cells with sarcosine, a common metabolite, significantly improves migration to local lymph nodes compared to previous strategies. This sarcosine addition for treatment can be applied to other cells such as T-cells in an adoptive immunotherapy strategy. This intracellular sarcosine loading method also has the potential to enhance migration of T-cells and stem cells allowing this treatment to be applicable in other diseases.
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