Wei Xiao and Song Mingzhu, distinguished Associate Research Fellows of the School of Preclinical Medicine of Chengdu University (CDU), recently published a paper in Coordination Chemistry Reviews, a top journal in Zone 1 of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and JCR Q1 in the chemistry field, with the lastest impact factor of 20.6 in 2022. They served as co-first authors, and Jin Guanghao, an undergraduate from Class 1 of Clinical Medicine enrolled in 2019, also contributed to this paper. This is also the first time that an undergraduate of CDU published a paper in this journal. The paper is entitled "Multidimensional profiling of functionalized photothermal nanoplatforms for synergistic cancer immunotherapy: Design, strategy, and challenge". Professor Zou Liang of the Science and Technology Department served as the corresponding author of this paper, with CDU as the affiliation of the two first authors and the corresponding author.
Coordination Chemistry Reviews, established in 1966, is a journal published by Elsevier. Falling under JCR Q1 in the chemistry field and Zone 1 of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the publication has been indexed in the international authoritative databases Science Citation Index (SCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). It is a top international journal, ranking in the top 1-2% of chemical journals.
It is found that photothermal immunotherapy (PTIT) using functionalized photothermal nanoplatforms synergized with immune-related drugs has been shown in numerous studies to be successful in the treatment of primary, recurrent, or metastatic cancers. The aim is to provide a range of suitable nanomaterial designs and optimal treatment methodologies for PTIT research, as well as some suggestions for future clinical research.
Generally, hyperthermia driven by near-infrared light can stimulate a certain antitumor immune response by inducing immunogenic cell death while directly ablating tumor cells. However, single photothermal therapy is insufficient to initiate a comprehensive host immune program against tumors, and tumor tissue contains a complex immunosuppressive microenvironment, necessitating the combination of other cooperative therapeutic strategies that can enhance immune response or block immune suppression for increased PTIT efficacy.
Given the biological delivery barriers of nanomedicine in PTIT, the reasonable design of nanocarriers from a multidimensional perspective is emphatically discussed here, primarily involving material categories and structural constituents, diverse physicochemical properties, and functional diversity. Furthermore, the impact of exceedingly complex variables in the tumor microenvironment (TME) on PTIT should be considered, such as poor immunogenicity, immunosuppression, hypoxia, and dense extracellular matrix. So, several collaborative strategies to augment tumor infiltration of immune cells and restore tumor immune surveillance are currently summarized, including directly amplified immune responses, reversal of immunosuppressive environments, and remodeling of typical TME features. Finally, the pre-clinical and clinical issues in existing PTIT techniques based on functionalized nanoplatforms are critically analyzed, and some potential solutions are provided accordingly.
Paper link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1h~jH2Tz3-ETY
