One of the causes of cancer death is its ability to evade attacks by the body's immune system, which allows tumors to grow and spread. Scientists can try to induce the immune system, also known as immunotherapy, to enter an attack mode to fight cancer and establish long-lasting immune resistance against cancer cells. Now researchers at Harvard's Weiss Bioinspired Engineering Institute and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown that a non-surgically injected programmable biomaterial can be freely assembled in vivo to resist or even help prevent cancer and contagiousness. Diseases such as AIDS. The discovery was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
"We are able to create 3D structures in the least aggressive way to enrich and activate immune cells in the host and locate and attack harmful cells in vivo." Research author David, a researcher at the Weiss Bio-Inspired Engineering Institute Dr. David Mooney and Robert P. Pinkas, a professor of bioengineering at Harvard University, said.
Biodegradable small rod-like structures formed from silica, also known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be added to biological and chemical components and passed through pinholes to Subcutaneous tissue. These small sticks will spontaneously assemble a three-dimensional scaffold at the vaccination site, just like pouring a box of matches on the table to form a matchstick. The porous space of the stacked MSRs is large enough to fill up with dendritic cells, the body's "monitoring" cells that monitor the body and trigger an immune response when a harmful presence is detected.
"It is well known that nano-sized porous silicon particles can manipulate individual cells from within, but this is the first time that micron-sized particles have been used to create 3D scaffolds in vivo to attract and fill tens of millions of immune cells," said co-author. Dr. Jayyun Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the Bioinspired Engineering Institute and an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, said.
There are many nanopores inside the MSRs synthesized in the laboratory. These nanopores can be filled with specific cytokines, oligonucleotides, large protein antigens, or any type of beneficial agent, resulting in a large number of possible combinations for treating various infections.
“Although we are currently focusing on the development of cancer vaccines, in the future we may be able to manipulate different types of cytokines by using MSRs to manipulate which types of dendritic cells or other types of immune cells are used for 3D scaffolds,†said the co-author Aileen Li, a Ph.D. student in SEAS bioengineering at Harvard University, said. "By coordinating the surface properties of MSRs and the size of the pores to control the introduction and release of different proteins and drugs, we can manipulate the immune system to treat different diseases."
Once the 3D scaffold has obtained dendritic cells from the body, the drug contained in the MSRs will be released, which will be monitored by the "monitoring cells" to initiate the immune response. The activated dendritic cells will leave the scaffold to the lymph nodes where it will sound an alarm to direct the body's immune system to attack specific cells, such as cancer cells. At the vaccination site, MSRs will biodegrade and dissolve naturally within a few months.
So far, the researchers tested the 3D vaccine only on mice, but found it extremely effective. Experiments have shown that injectable 3D scaffolds attract millions of dendritic cells in host mice, which dissipate to the lymph nodes and elicit a strong immune response.
Processing vaccines is very easy and fast, so when infectious diseases occur, it is possible to produce and market large quantities of vaccines. "We expect 3D vaccines to be widely used in many places, and the nature of their injections makes injections inside and outside the clinic extremely simple," Mooney said.
Since the vaccine works by eliciting an immune response, this method can even be used as a preventive measure to form the body's immune resistance before infection. "Injectable immunotherapies that use programmable biomaterials as a powerful carrier to deliver targeted therapies and preventive care will help fight a wide range of deadly infections, including common killer AIDS and Ebola, as well as cancer." Weiss Bioinspired Engineering The founding director of the institute, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, Professor of vascular biology at Judah Forkman, and professor of bioengineering at SEAS, Harvard University, said Dr. Donald Ingber. "These injectable 3D vaccines provide the least aggressive, scalable method of treatment that mimics the powerful immune response of the body itself in the face of disease, which previously evaded immune testing. of."
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