Immunotherapy emerges as an effective avenue for
tumor elimination and has many advantages compared with traditional surgery,
radiotherapy, and
chemotherapy.
Tumor vaccines play an important role in
cancer immunotherapy, while the application of
tumor vaccines in clinical usage is limited because only limited response can be induced by primary
tumor antigens. Accordingly, it is a key point to activate T-cell response with some novel
tumor vaccines. Here, we applied phage display biopanning and screened a
peptide (TY) that could combine with bone-marrow-derived-dendritic-cells (BMDCs) specifically and spleenic DCs. Then we developed mesoporous
silica nanoparticles (MSN-TY/OVA/CpG), with
peptide TY and OVA/CpG to target and activate DCs, respectively. Our results showed that the nanoparticles (NPs) could be specifically absorbed by DC in vitro, which enhanced the maturation and activation of DCs in vitro and in vivo. The in vitro study demonstrated the efficiency of nanoparticles in
antigen uptake by BMDCs and in the activation of
antigen-specific cytotoxic CD8+ T cells. Moreover, MSN-TY/OVA/CpG could activate
antigen-specific CD8+ T cells and elicited the cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) priming in naive C57BL/6J mice. Therapeutic application of MSN-TY/OVA/CpG enhanced the activation of DCs and the introducing of CD8+ T cell-mediated immune response to promote
tumor elimination, prolong survival of
tumor-bearing mice, and cause less systemic toxicity. All these results showed that the targeted
nanovaccines could deliver
antigen into DCs and activate
cancer immunotherapy.