Immunostimulatory photochemotherapeutic nanocapsule for enhanced colon cancer treatment

Abstract Immunotherapy has made great progress in recent years while most cancer patients cannot benefit from it. Photochemotherapy combination strategy holds promise for developing novel immunotherapy the bearing immunosuppressive tumors such as colon cancer. In this research, a core/shell-structured polydopamine (PDA)-based nanoplatform is constructed to load two Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cytotoxic drugs, i.e. immunostimulatory doxorubicin (Dox) immunomodulatory curcumin (Cur) achieve photochemotherapy of primary upon 808 nm near infrared (NIR) irradiation (1 W/cm 2 5 min) subsequent prevention rechallenged distant tumors. The experimental data have shown that PDA-mediated photothermal therapy (PTT) synergized therapeutic drugs inducing cell death very efficiently inhibited tumor growth (by ?92%) at low doses therapeutics (0.25, 5, 30 mg/kg Dox, Cur, PDA, respectively). More significantly, combined promoted strong adaptive antitumor immune responses successfully prevented tumorigenesis setting rechallenge model. Our research thus demonstrated promising efficacy photochemotherapeutic nanoformulation treatment provided way improve effects conventional chemotherapeutic drugs.