Cell Reports (Oct 2023)

Engineering of dendritic cell bispecific extracellular vesicles for tumor-targeting immunotherapy

  • Fang Xu,
  • Dongpeng Jiang,
  • Jialu Xu,
  • Huaxing Dai,
  • Qin Fan,
  • Ziying Fei,
  • Beilei Wang,
  • Yue Zhang,
  • Qingle Ma,
  • Qianyu Yang,
  • Yitong Chen,
  • Edikan A. Ogunnaike,
  • Jianhong Chu,
  • Chao Wang

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 42, no. 10
p. 113138

Abstract

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Summary: Advances in the development of therapeutic extracellular vesicles (EVs) for cancer immunotherapy have allowed them to emerge as an alternative to cell therapy. In this proof-of-concept work, we develop bispecific EVs (BsEVs) by genetically engineering EV-producing dendritic cells (DCs) with aCD19 scFv and PD1 for targeting tumor antigens and blocking immune checkpoint proteins simultaneously. We find that these bispecific EVs (EVs-PD1-aCD19) have an impressive ability to accumulate in huCD19-expressing solid tumors following intravenous injection. In addition, EVs-PD1-aCD19 can remarkably reverse the immune landscape of the solid tumor by blocking PD-L1. Furthermore, EVs-PD1-aCD19 can also target tumor-derived EVs in circulation, which prevents the formation of a premetastatic niche in other tissues. Our technology is a demonstration of bispecific EV-based cancer immunotherapy, which may inspire treatments against various types of tumors with different surface antigens and even a patient-tailored therapy.

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