Cornell researchers have developed particles that can supercharge immunotherapy, offering a breakthrough approach to treating resistant cancers. The nanoparticles work in an unexpected dual capacity: they fundamentally alter hostile tumor conditions while amplifying the potency of existing immunotherapy drugs.
Survival outcomes in mouse experiments show the efficacy of the newly developed particles. Animals with aggressive melanoma receiving the particles combined with immunotherapy drugs targeting checkpoint proteins and immune signaling molecules lived significantly longer than those getting immunotherapy drugs alone. The particles reshaped conditions inside tumors, enabling the immunotherapy drugs to mount a far more effective assault on cancer cells.
The particles, designated Cornell prime dots or C’dots, simultaneously trigger multiple anticancer mechanisms. They wake up innate immune defenses by engaging pattern-detection proteins, freeze cancer cell multiplication by jamming their growth cycle, reduce immune-dampening signals within tumors, and retrain key defensive cells like T cells and macrophages to better recognize and destroy cancer.
Professor Michelle Bradbury from Weill Cornell Medicine, who spearheaded the investigation, said these particles function as inherently bioactive therapeutic tools rather than inert transport vessels. They activate numerous biological pathways at once in ways standard treatments struggle to match, she explained.
These tiny fluorescent silica structures were already being tested in people for cancer detection and medication transport before scientists uncovered this latest capability. The December 29 Nature Nanotechnology report shows they possess healing properties completely separate from any drugs attached to them. Ulrich Wiesner from Cornell Engineering, whose laboratory created the technology, described the finding as highly unexpected.
Hostile solid cancers such as prostate, melanoma, colon, and breast malignancies typically create “cold” internal conditions that don’t spark robust immune reactions and commonly deflect immunotherapy attempts. The investigation proves that C’dots flip these cold cancers into “hot” ones, generating an inflammatory state that permits immunotherapies to operate much more successfully.
Numerous aggressive cancers resist immunotherapies when used alone, Bradbury said. These nanoparticles work by reducing the inhibitory signals that tumors use to protect themselves, which curtails cancer expansion and undermines resistance mechanisms, she explained.
Wiesner offered a fascinating evolutionary explanation for the broad-spectrum effects. Living organisms have interacted with microscopic silica particles across evolutionary history, including by eating vegetation like grasses and marine plants, he observed. His theory proposes that cancer knocks biological systems off balance, while silica works to restore that balance.
Though still theoretical, Wiesner and associates are investigating this concept alongside Cornell nutrition scientists. The results also point to uses stretching far past melanoma. The Weill Cornell Medicine group documented comparable immune-stimulating outcomes in additional solid cancer types including prostate and ovarian malignancies.
With other approaches by entities like Calidi Biotherapeutics Inc. (NYSE American: CLDI) leveraging oncolytic viruses to target malignancies also gaining traction, a transformation is building up in the field of cancer immunotherapy around the world.
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