(398c) Nanomaterials for Combination Therapies and Immunomodulation

This talk will focus on how nanomaterials can be designed and developed to deliver combination therapies for cancer treatment, as well as activate the immune system and serve as adjuvants for sub-unit vaccines.

The first part of the talk will focus on how nanomaterials developed in our laboratory can be used to deliver combination therapies for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer has a very high fatality rate, and the current treatment using gemcitabine (GEM) does not work effectively, partly due to desmoplasia. We have developed dual delivery nanoscale devices to deliver miRNA and GEM together, resulting in downregulation of the Sonic hedgehog signaling pathway and leading to inhibition of desmoplasia, pancreatic stellate cells and cancer stem cells. This, in turn, improved therapeutic outcomes of GEM in PC in mice through improving its perfusion in the tumor, and also led to significant reduction of metastasis.

The second part of the talk will focus on nanovaccines that can deliver pathogenic proteins, activate the immune system, and act as vaccine adjuvants. Respiratory pathogens such as influenza affect large segments of the population. Universal influenza vaccines that can provide effective protection against various strains of the pathogen, and in elderly populations as well, are sorely needed. We have developed virus-mimicking nanomaterials or nanovaccines that provide a depot for the antigen and enhance and modulate the immune response by targeting immune cells. We have shown long-term sustained neutralizing antibody titers, reduction of viral loads and effective protection against viral challenge in both young and aged mice as a result of administration of the nanovaccines.