A next-generation treatment strategy has been proposed that coats immune cells attacking cancer with nanotechnology to boost effectiveness while reducing side effects. The approach either creates CAR-T cells directly inside a patient or delivers a cancer vaccine precisely to the tumor.
Seoul National University Hospital neurosurgeon Baek Sun-ha's team said on the 10th that, together with Professor Schmidt-Wolf and Amit Shama at University Hospital Bonn in Germany and Dr. Jingjing Fu at Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, it published a review in the international journal Molecular Cancer analyzing research and clinical status of cancer immunotherapy using nanotechnology.
Immunotherapy helps a patient's immune cells attack cancer, but it does not work for every patient. In particular, with solid tumors, immune cells have difficulty penetrating the tumor, and excessive activation of immune responses can cause side effects such as colitis and pneumonia.
The team saw that loading drugs into nanoparticles and delivering them selectively to cancer tissue could address these limits. Nanoparticles can be engineered by tuning their surface and structure to release drugs at specific sites.
The team categorized cancer immunotherapy into six areas and summarized nanotechnology applications: ▲ immune checkpoint inhibitors (therapies that release the brakes that block immune cell attacks) ▲ cancer vaccines (therapies that train the immune system on cancer cell traits) ▲ CAR-T (cell therapy that equips a patient's T cells with the ability to find and attack cancer cells) ▲ CIK cells (immunocyte therapy activating immune cells to attack cancer cells) ▲ cytokines (signal proteins that help activate and expand immune cells) ▲ complement therapy (therapies that use blood proteins that assist immune responses).
CAR-T is a representative case. Conventional treatment requires taking a patient's T cells out of the body, inserting genes, expanding them, and reinfusing them.
The team proposed a strategy to deliver CAR genes directly to T cells in the body using nanoparticles to generate CAR-T cells in vivo. If commercialized, it could reduce the processes and expense of cultivating and manufacturing cells externally. However, additional validation is still needed for clinical use.
Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) can also be used for personalized mRNA cancer vaccines. By encoding mRNA with information on "neoantigens," unique antigens that appear only in a patient's cancer, the approach guides T cells to recognize that cancer.
A strategy was also proposed to replace conventional CIK cell therapy, which cultivates immune cells outside the body. The team suggested encapsulating four immune-stimulating agents—anti-CD3 antibody, NKG2D ligand, IL-2, and IL-15—into a single nanoparticle for delivery to tumors, inducing local T cells to acquire properties similar to CIK cells.
A method of combining different therapies into a single nanoparticle was also introduced. It either co-delivers tumor antigens and immune checkpoint inhibitors, or attaches an anticancer drug and a tumor-targeting antibody to iron oxide nanoparticles and then uses an external magnetic field to generate heat, simultaneously inducing drug release and immune responses.
The team also presented AI-based nanoparticle design, blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration, and combinations with CRISPR gene editing and the microbiome as next-generation research directions. It cited standardization for mass production and verification of in vivo safety as tasks for developing actual therapeutics.
Baek Sun-ha, a neurosurgeon at Seoul National University Hospital, said, "Nanotechnology is a platform that can increase the precision of delivery in cancer immunotherapy and reduce side effects," adding, "We expect it to serve as References for the development of next-generation cancer immunotherapies and their clinical application."
References
Molecular Cancer (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12943-026-02736-0