Engineered Carrier-Free Nanosystem-Induced In Situ Therapeutic Vaccines for Potent Cancer Immunotherapy.

In situ vaccines that can stimulate tumor immune response have emerged as a breakthrough in antitumor therapy. However, the immunosuppressed tumor microenvironment and insufficient infiltration of immune cells lead to ineffective antitumor immunity. Hence, a biomimetic carrier-free nanosystem (BCC) to induce synergistic phototherapy/chemotherapy-driven in situ vaccines was designed. A carrier-free nanosystem was developed using phototherapeutic reagents CyI and celastrol as raw materials. In vitro and in vivo studies have shown that under NIR light irradiation, BCC-mediated photo/chemotherapy not only accelerates the release of drugs to deeper parts of tumors, achieving timing and light-controlled drug delivery to result in cell apoptosis, but also effectively stimulates the antitumor response to induce in situ vaccine, which could invoke long-lasting antitumor immunity to inhibit tumor metastasis and eliminate distant tumor. This therapeutic strategy holds promise for priming robust innate and adaptive immune responses, arresting cancer progression, and inducing tumor dormancy.

"Closed-Loop" O2-Economizer Induced In Situ Therapeutic Vaccine against Hypoxic Tumors.

Therapeutic tumor vaccines, which use tumor antigens to stimulate a cancer patient's immune system to eventually kill the tumor tissues, have emerged as one of the most attractive strategies in anticancer research. Especially, exploring in situ vaccines has become a potential field in cancer immunotherapy. However, due to the hypoxic tumor microenvironment, the generation of tumor antigens is always mild and not sufficient. Hence, in this study, we designed a closed-loop mitochondrial oxygen-economizer (TPCA) to induce enhanced phototherapy-driven in situ vaccines. The O2-economizer was developed by the integration of the photosensitizer CyI and the mitochondrial inhibitor atovaquone into the PAMAM dendrimer. In vitro and in vivo studies showed that TPCA could enter the mitochondria through (3-propylcarboxyl) triphenylphosphine bromide (TPP) and effectively restrict the respiration of tumor cells to reduce tumor hypoxia, thus providing continuous oxygen for enhanced iodinated cyanine dye mediated photodynamic therapy, which could further induce in situ vaccines for ablating the primary tumor directly and inhibiting the tumor metastasis and recurrence. Furthermore, the antitumor mechanism revealed that O2-economizer-based oxygen-boosted PDT elicited immunogenic cancer cell death with enhanced exposure and release of DAMPs and altered the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment with increased recruitment of T cells in tumors, thereby inducing in situ vaccines and provoking the systematic antitumor responses against CT26 tumors. This study will provide innovative approaches for local, abscopal, and metastatic tumor treatment.

Oxidation of Hypophosphorous Acid by a Ruthenium(VI) Nitrido Complex in Aqueous Acidic Solution. Evidence for a Proton-Coupled N-Atom Transfer Mechanism.

The oxidation of hypophosphorous acid (H3PO2) by a ruthenium(VI) nitrido complex, [(L)RuVI(N)(OH2)]+ (RuVIN; L = N,N'-bis(salicylidene)-o-cyclohexyldiamine dianion), has been studied in aqueous acidic solutions at pH 0-2.50. The reaction has the following stoichiometry: 2[(L)RuVI(N)(OH2)]+ + 3H3PO2 + H2O → 2[(L)RuIII(NH2P(OH)2)(OH2)]+ + H3PO3. The pseudo-first-order rate constant, kobs, depends linearly on [H3PO2], and the second-order rate constant k2 depends on [H+] according to the relationship k2 = k[H+]/([H+] + Ka), where k is the rate constant for the oxidation of H3PO2 molecule and Ka is the dissociation constant of H3PO2. At 298.0 K and I = 1.0 M, k = (2.04 ± 0.19) × 10-2 M-1 s-1 and Ka = (6.38 ± 0.63) × 10-2 M. A kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of 2.9 ± 0.1 was obtained when kinetic studies were carried out with D3PO2 at pH 1.16, suggesting P-H bond cleavage in the rate-determining step. On the other hand, when the kinetics were determined in D2O, an inverse KIE of 0.21 ± 0.03 (H3PO2 in H2O vs H3PO2 in D2O) was found. On the basis of experimental results and DFT calculations, the proposed mechanism involves an acid-catalyzed tautomerization of H2P(O)(OH) to HP(OH)2; the latter molecule is the reacting species which reacts with RuVIN via a proton-coupled N-atom transfer pathway.