Re-modulating the immune system in tumor microenvironments for better cancer treatment

Cancer immunotherapy has for the last decade been one of the fastest developing therapeutic areas in oncology with promising clinical benefits, supporting a role of immunotherapy as a cornerstone in future cancer therapy. There is an urgent need to develop new technologies to provide more efficient treatment of solid tumors and late stage cancers. One approach that may lead to better treatment of cancer is to utilize the patient’s own immune system by administration of Toll Like Receptor (TLR) agonists, in order to generate an early pro-inflammatory condition and a durable anti-tumor memory response. We have been focused on using nanocarrier drug delivery technology to re-model the tumor microenvironment with focus on combining delivery of chemotherapy to induce immunogenicity within the tumor and activation of the adaptive arm of the immune system by co-administration of TLR agonists. We have investigated delivery of TLR agonists administered systemically as free drugs and in drug delivery formulations that target specific immune cell subsets. Thus, we have aimed to tackle a major challenge in the immunotherapy field, i.e. treatment of solid tumors with an unfavourable immune balance in the tumor microenvironment polarized towards an anti-inflammatory condition generated by regulatory T cells, M2 macrophages and myeloid derived suppressor cells