Homing immunotherapies

Chasing solid tumor resection with immunotherapy can prevent cancer recurrence by eliminating circulating tumor cells and microtumors, but the approach has low efficacy in some patients and runs the risk of systemic side effects. North Carolina researchers have found a way around these limitations by using platelets to target cancer immunotherapies to surgical wound sites.

In a paper published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the UNC group showed in mice that an anti-PD-L1 mAb conjugated to the surface of platelets was more effective at eliminating residual tumors and cancer cells than the free mAb (see Distillery, January 2017)...