BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Hitchhiker's guide to the lymph node

March 13, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has figured out how to ferry cancer vaccines into lymph nodes-a location that orchestrates immune responses but has been hard to target directly. The key was tethering the vaccines to albumin to hitchhike on the carrier's normal transportation route.1

In proof-of-concept studies, tumor antigens and adjuvants targeted to lymph nodes elicited strong immune responses and slowed or reduced tumor growth in mice. The team is now testing additional cancer vaccines in mice and is combining the approach with other immune-modulatory therapies...