d, Kaplan-Meier survival curves of mice in the different treatment groups in the B16F10-OVA model (= 8 from indie animals). the cytoplasm. The re-assembled nanosheets also boost tumour immunity via activation of specific inflammation pathways. The nanotransformer-based vaccine effectively inhibits tumour growth in the B16F10-OVA and human papilloma virus-E6/E7 tumour models in mice. Moreover, combining the nanotransformer-based vaccine with anti-PD-L1 antibodies results in over 83 days of survival Schisandrin C and in about half of the mice produces total tumour regression in the B16F10 model. This proton-driven transformable nanovaccine offers a strong and safe strategy for Rabbit Polyclonal to Gab2 (phospho-Tyr452) malignancy immunotherapy. Malignancy vaccines that aim to activate tumour-specific immunity hold promise for tumour treatment1C4. Cytosolic delivery of appropriate tumour antigens, activation of the innate immune system, and cross-presentation of tumour antigens by antigen-presenting cells are essential for inducing strong tumour-specific immunity1,5. Nanocarrier systems are encouraging nonviral brokers with which to facilitate cytosolic delivery of many different cargos. Strategies including the use of proton sponge polymers6,7, cell-penetrating peptides8C10, charge-reversible molecules11C13 and pore-formation molecules14C17 have been developed to promote the cytosolic delivery of vaccines18C20. In addition, co-delivery of a tumour antigen and an adjuvant in a single nanoparticle has been achieved to boost the poor immunogenicity of the tumour antigen21C23. Despite these improvements in the field, development of highly efficient antitumour vaccinesespecially personalized vaccines that can potently induce T cell priming in humansis still a challenge24,25. Here we report on a proton-driven nanotransformer-based vaccine (NTV) (Fig. 1). The NTV is usually comprised of a polymer-peptide conjugate-based nanotransformer (NT), along with a loaded antigenic peptide (AP). In acidic media, the particles transform into bigger structures, which causes endosomal membrane disruption and thus cytosolic delivery of the AP. Schisandrin C Endosomal membrane integrity and dendritic cell (DC) maturation were analysed after NTV treatment in vitro. Lymph-node-trafficking of NTV and the elicitation of Schisandrin C tumour-specific CD8+ T-cells were investigated in vivo. OT-I mice were used to evaluate the antigen-specific T-cell proliferation in vivo. An in vivo killing assay was also exploited to assess the antigen-specific killing induced by the vaccine. The antitumour efficiency of NTV was evaluated in three tumour models (B16F10-OVA, the human papillomavirus (HPV)-E6/E7 tumour model and the B16F10 neoantigen model). Finally, we investigated the effect of combined administration of the neoantigen-loaded NT with anti-PD-L1. All these experiments reveal that this proton-driven transformable nanovaccine induces a strong and safe antitumour immunity. Open in a separate windows Fig. 1 | Schematic illustration of a proton-driven NTV for malignancy immunotherapy.a, The NTV is composed of a polymer-peptide conjugate-based NT loaded with AP. The NTV has a spherical morphology with a diameter of about 100 nm at pH 7.4. b, After the NTV is usually internalized by DCs, the acidic endosomal environment (pH 5.6) will trigger fast Schisandrin C cleavage of the PDP peptide, which will then re-assemble into nanosheets with sizes in the range 5C8 m. The morphological switch prospects to disruption of the endosomal membrane and delivery of AP into the cytosol. Moreover, the cytoplasmic nanosheets activate the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway, Schisandrin C which promotes DC maturation and antigen processing. These two features contribute to the enhanced cross-presentation of AP to CD8+ T-cells and efficient antitumour immunity. PDP, pyrene-conjugated D-peptide; NLRP3, NOD-like receptor, pyrin-domain-containing 3. Synthesis and characterization of the NTV A schematic illustration of the synthesis of a representative NT is usually shown in Fig. 1a,?,bb and Supplementary Fig. 1. p(DMAEMA22-OGEMA4)-is usually temperature)30. A dye-release experiment was employed to further investigate the ability of these NTs to disrupt endosomal membranes16. Physique 2g, ?,hh shows that both NTV1 and NTV2 promoted the release of dye from mimic artificial endosomes (AEs) at pH 5.6, while free AP, NRV1 or NRV2 elicited much less dye release under the same conditions. However, all these nanoparticles induced negligible dye release from AEs at pH 7.4. TEM experiments also confirmed the time-dependent disruption of AEs by NTV1 and NTV2 in pH 5.6. NTV2 showed effective disruption of AEs; the AEs were broken into pieces and the large re-assembled nanosheets can be observed in Supplementary Fig. 15. However, although NTV1 also induced AE disruption (small pieces of AE can be observed in Supplementary Fig. 15), most of the reassembled nanostructure was trapped in the AEs, only very few nanofibre structures can be observed under TEM. These results exhibited that NTV1 and.