Nanotechnology in Cancer Immunotherapy: Emerging Strategies, Clinical Translation, and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Background: Immunotherapy for cancer has revolutionised modern oncology by preparing the immune system to attack and kill tumour cells. Its broad implementation is hindered by systemic toxicity, poor tumour-specific delivery, poor drug stability, as well as the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment (TME) despite its outstanding clinical success. Nanotechnology offers a possible approach to overcome these limitations by enabling targeted drug delivery, controlled release, improved bioavailability, and modulation of the TME.

Methods: Selected recent peer-reviewed articles from well-known scientific databases, such as Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, to conduct a comprehensive literature review. To describe the design of nanomaterials, their mode of action, preclinical and clinical outcomes, and the problems associated with translation, an analysis and synthesis of the relevant literature were conducted.

Results: In recent years, several nanoplatforms such as lipid-based nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, inorganic nanomaterials, biomimetic nanocarriers, and exosome-inspired systems have been demonstrated to significantly improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. These nanocarriers reduce systemic toxicity and enhance the targeted delivery of cytokines, cancer vaccines, nucleic acid therapies, and immunological checkpoint inhibitors. Moreover, nanotechnology can also help in TME reprogramming, antigen presentation, activation of cytotoxic T cells, and therapeutic responses when combined with conventional therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation, and phototherapy. Nevertheless, therapeutic translation, regulatory clearance, long-term biosafety, and large-scale production remain significant challenges.

Conclusion: Nanotechnology provides a revolutionary approach in cancer immunotherapy to improve precision, safety, and therapeutic efficacy. Although there has been considerable progress in pre-clinical and initial clinical research, optimal clinical translation requires further enhancement of nanomaterial design parameters and regularization of production processes as well as rigorous clinical evaluation. In the future, it is hoped that interdisciplinary research will accelerate the development of personalized nano-immunotherapeutic techniques that can better control cancer. These reviews systematically summarize the recent advances of nano-immunotherapy, classify the major classes of functional nanomaterials, discuss the current challenges in clinical translation, and propose future directions.