Controlling vaccine kinetics using tannic acid for enhanced humoral immunity.

Despite the success of global vaccination campaigns, vaccine access in low-resource settings is an ongoing challenge. Subunit vaccines are a well-established and clinically scalable intervention, yet they have achieved limited success for poorly immunogenic antigens such as those associated with SARS-CoV-2. Delivery strategies that promote gradual release of subunit vaccines from the injection site offer the potential to improve humoral immunity by enhancing lymph node exposure, however, clinical implementation of this strategy is challenging due to poor scalability and high costs.

An estrogen receptor signaling transcriptional program linked to immune evasion in human hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.

Unlabelled: T cells are generally sparse in hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancer, potentially due to limited antigen presentation, but the driving mechanisms of low T cell abundance remains unclear. Therefore, we defined and investigated programs ('gene modules'), related to estrogen receptor signaling (ERS) and immune signaling using bulk and single-cell transcriptome and multiplexed immunofluorescence of breast cancer tissues from multiple clinical sources and human cell lines. The ERS gene module, dominantly expressed in cancer cells, was negatively associated with immune-related gene modules TNFα/NF-κB signaling and type-I interferon (IFN-I) response, which were expressed in distinct stromal and immune cell types, but also, in part, expressed and preserved as a cancer cell-intrinsic mechanisms.

An ionic liquid-based adjuvant for modulating cellular and humoral immune responses.

Vaccination is an important strategy for the prevention of infectious diseases worldwide. Adjuvants can be incorporated in vaccine formulations to enhance the resultant immune response and subsequently confer more robust protection upon natural infection. While adjuvants have exciting potential to improve vaccination, the landscape of materials employed in clinical adjuvants is small and its expansion is needed to facilitate vaccine development against current and future infectious diseases.

Dendritic Cell Immune Modulation Polyphenol Membrane Coatings.

Cellular hitchhiking is an emerging strategy for the control of adoptively transferred immune cells. Hitchhiking approaches are primarily mediated by adhesion of nano and microparticles to the cell membrane, which conveys an ability to modulate transferred cells local drug delivery. Although T cell therapies employing this strategy have progressed into the clinic, phagocytic cells including dendritic cells (DCs) are much more challenging to engineer.

Polymer Micropatches as B-Cell Engagers.

B cells, despite their several unique functionalities, remain largely untapped for use as an adoptive cell therapy and are limited to use for antibody production. B cells can be easily sourced, they possess excellent lymphoid-homing capabilities, and they can act as antigen-presenting cells (APCs), offering an alternative to dendritic cells (DCs), which have shown limited efficacy in the clinical setting. Soluble factors such as IL-4 and anti-CD40 antibody can enhance the activation, survival, and antigen-presenting capabilities of B cells; however, it is difficult to attain sufficiently high concentrations of these biologics to stimulate B cells .

Polymer Backpack-Loaded Tissue Infiltrating Monocytes for Treating Cancer.

Adoptive cell therapies are dramatically altering the treatment landscape of cancer. However, treatment of solid tumors remains a major unmet need, in part due to limited adoptive cell infiltration into the tumor and in part due to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. The heterogeneity of tumors and presence of nonresponders also call for development of antigen-independent therapeutic approaches.

Neutrophils bearing adhesive polymer micropatches as a drug-free cancer immunotherapy.

Tumour-associated neutrophils can exert antitumour effects but can also assume a pro-tumoural phenotype in the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment. Here we show that neutrophils can be polarized towards the antitumour phenotype by discoidal polymer micrometric 'patches' that adhere to the neutrophils' surfaces without being internalized. Intravenously administered micropatch-loaded neutrophils accumulated in the spleen and in tumour-draining lymph nodes, and activated splenic natural killer cells and T cells, increasing the accumulation of dendritic cells and natural killer cells.

Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere snow loss.

Documenting the rate, magnitude and causes of snow loss is essential to benchmark the pace of climate change and to manage the differential water security risks of snowpack declines. So far, however, observational uncertainties in snow mass have made the detection and attribution of human-forced snow losses elusive, undermining societal preparedness. Here we show that human-caused warming has caused declines in Northern Hemisphere-scale March snowpack over the 1981-2020 period.

Cancer vaccines in the clinic.

Vaccines are an important tool in the rapidly evolving repertoire of immunotherapies in oncology. Although cancer vaccines have been investigated for over 30 years, very few have achieved meaningful clinical success. However, recent advances in areas such antigen identification, formulation development and manufacturing, combination therapy regimens, and indication and patient selection hold promise to reinvigorate the field.