SARS-CoV-2 B Epitope-Guided Neoantigen NanoVaccines Enhance Tumor-Specific CD4/CD8 T Cell Immunity through B Cell Antigen Presentation.

Current neoantigen cancer vaccines activate T cell immunity through dendritic cell/macrophage-mediated antigen presentation. It is unclear whether incorporating B cell-mediated antigen presentation into current neoantigen vaccines could enhance CD4/CD8 T cell immunity to improve their anticancer efficacy. We developed SARS-CoV-2 B cell epitope-guided neoantigen peptide/mRNA cancer nanovaccines (BTVax) to improve anticancer efficacy by enhancing tumor-specific CD4/CD8 T cell antitumor immunity through B cell-mediated antigen presentation.

Proteolysis-targeting vaccines (PROTAVs) for robust combination immunotherapy of melanoma.

Protein/peptide subunit vaccines are promising to promote the tumor therapeutic efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). However, current protein/peptide vaccines elicit limited antitumor T cell responses, leading to suboptimal therapeutic efficacy. Here, we present proteolysis-targeting vaccines (PROTAVs) that facilitate antigen proteolytic processing and cross-presentation to potentiate T cell responses for robust ICB combination immunotherapy of melanoma.

Multiepitope supramolecular peptide nanofibers eliciting coordinated humoral and cellular antitumor immune responses.

Subunit vaccines inducing antibodies against tumor-specific antigens have yet to be clinically successful. Here, we use a supramolecular α-helical peptide nanofiber approach to design epitope-specific vaccines raising simultaneous B cell, CD8 T cell, and CD4 T cell responses against combinations of selected epitopes and show that the concurrent induction of these responses generates strong antitumor effects in mice, with significant improvements over antibody or CD8 T cell-based vaccines alone, in both prophylactic and therapeutic subcutaneous melanoma models. Nanofiber vaccine-induced antibodies mediated in vitro tumoricidal antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) and antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP).

Phenylboronic ester-modified polymeric nanoparticles for promoting TRP2 peptide antigen delivery in cancer immunotherapy.

The tremendous development of peptide-based cancer vaccine has attracted incremental interest as a powerful approach in cancer management, prevention and treatment. As successful as tumor vaccine has been, major challenges associated with achieving efficient immune response against cancer are (1) drainage to and retention in lymph nodes; (2) uptake by dendritic cells (DCs); (3) activation of DCs. In order to overcome these barriers, here we construct PBE-modified TRP2 nanovaccine, which comprises TRP2 peptide tumor antigen and diblock copolymer PEG-b-PAsp grafted with phenylboronic ester (PBE).