Drug delivery for metabolism targeted cancer immunotherapy

Abstract

Drug delivery vehicles have made a great impact on cancer immunotherapies in clinics and pre-clinical research. Notably, the science of delivery of cancer vaccines and immunotherapeutics, modulating immune cell functions has inspired development of several successful companies and clinical products. Interestingly, these drug delivery modalities not only modulate the function of immune cells (often quantified at the mRNA and protein levels), but also modulate the metabolism of these cells. Specifically, cancer immunotherapy often leads to activation of different immune cells such as dendritic cells, macrophages and T cells, which is driven by energy metabolism of these cells. Recently, there has been a great excitement about interventions that can directly modulate the energy metabolism of these immune cells and thus affect their function and in turn lead to a robust cancer immune response. Here we review few strategies that have been tested in clinic and pre-clinical research for generating effective metabolism-associated cancer therapies and immunotherapies.