Cancer vaccine delivery

CANCER VACCINE DELIVERY LIVING VS. NON-LIVING SYSTEMS... 

Despite the evidence for the cytotoxicity of CNTs, there are an increasing number of published studies that support the potential development of CNT-based biomaterials for tissue regeneration (e.g., neuronal substrates [143] and orthopedic materials [154—156]), cancer treatment [157], and drug/vaccine delivery systems [158, 159]. Most of these applications will involve the implantation and/or administration of such materials into patients as for any therapeutic or diagnostic agent used, the toxic potential of the CNTs must be evaluated in relation to their potential benefits [160]. For this reason, detailed investigations of the interactions between CNTs/CNT-based implants and various cell types have been carried out [154, 155, 161]. A comprehensive description of such results, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter. Extensive reviews on the biocompatibility of implantable CNT composite materials [21, 143, 162] and of CNT drug-delivery systems [162] are available. 

Do cancer vaccines offer a promising new approach that can potentially revolutionize cancer treatment The answer appears to be a resounding yes. However major hurdles remain to be overcome before this becomes a successful clinical modality. Several of these issues are related to vaccine delivery. Novel delivery systems that can target cancer antigens and immunomodulatory molecules to subsets of immune cells in a controlled release mode may be able to meet several of these challenges. The PLGA nanoparticulate system may serve as a prototype of such a delivery module. 

Gordon EM, Levy JP, Reed RA, etal. Targetingmetastaticcancerfrom the inside Anew generation of targeted gene delivery vectors enables personalized cancer vaccination in situ. Int J Oncol 2008 33 665-675. 

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