Dual-adjuvant effect of pH-sensitive liposomes loaded with STING and TLR9 agonists regress tumor development by enhancing Th1 immune response.

Nucleic acid-based pattern recognition receptor agonists are effective adjuvants and immunotherapeutic agents. Rather than single applications, ligand combinations could synergistically potentiate immune responses by elevating cytokine and chemokine production via triggering multiple signaling pathways. However, short half-lives of such labile ligands due to nuclease attack and limited cellular uptake due to their structure significantly hamper their in vivo performances. More importantly, simultaneous delivery and activity presentation of protein antigen and nucleic acid ligands critically limit the clinical development of these constructs. In this work, we approached this problem by co-encapsulating a model antigen ovalbumin along with TLR9 and STING ligands within liposomes, a well-established drug delivery system that enables payload stability and enhanced cellular activity upon internalization. Moreover, by loading dual ligands we postulated to achieve heightened Th-1 immune response that would yield pronounced protective vaccine efficacy. We show that, pH-sensitive liposomes co-encapsulating CpG ODN and cGAMP induced synergistic innate immune response by elevating type I and type II interferon levels. Most importantly, this vaccine formulation led to ~70% regression of established melanoma tumor. pH-sensitive liposomal vaccine administration elevated IgG2c/IgG1 antibody ratio, indicative of augmented OVA-specific Th1-biased immunity. Importantly, while the frequency of tumor-specific IFN-γ producing CD8+ T-cells was significantly increased, the M2-type anti-inflammatory macrophage levels were decreased in the tumor bed. In conclusion, our strategy induces reversal of immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, while enhancing effective anti-tumor immune-response. We propose that this could be coupled with standard therapies during combating tumor eradication.

Exosomes from antigen-pulsed dendritic cells induce stronger antigen-specific immune responses than microvesicles in vivo.

Extracellular vesicles (EV), including exosomes and microvesicles (MV), represent a rapidly expanding field of research with diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Although many aspects of EV function remain to be revealed and broad investigations are warranted, most published findings focus on only one vesicle category or a non-separated mix of EVs. In this paper, we investigated both MVs and exosomes from Ovalbumin (OVA)-pulsed dendritic cells for their immunostimulatory potential side-by-side in vivo. Only exosomes induced antigen-specific CD8+ T-cells, and were more efficient than MVs in eliciting antigen-specific IgG production. Further, mainly exosome-primed mouse splenocytes showed significant ex vivo interferon gamma production in response to antigen restimulation. Exosomes carried high levels of OVA, while OVA in MVs was barely detectable, which could explain the more potent antigen-specific response induced by exosomes. Moreover, exosomes induced increased germinal center B cell proportions, whereas MVs had no such effect. Immunisation with both vesicle types combined showed neither inhibitory nor synergistic effects. We conclude that DC-derived MVs and exosomes differ in their capacity to incorporate antigen and induce immune responses. The results are of importance for understanding the role of EVs in vivo, and for future design of vesicle-based immunotherapies and vaccines.

Circulating LL37 targets plasma extracellular vesicles to immune cells and intensifies Behçet's disease severity.

Behçet's disease (BD) activity is characterised by sustained, over-exuberant immune activation, yet the underlying mechanisms leading to active BD state are poorly defined. Herein, we show that the human cathelicidin derived antimicrobial peptide LL37 associates with and directs plasma extracellular vesicles (EV) to immune cells, thereby leading to enhanced immune activation aggravating BD pathology. Notably, disease activity was correlated with elevated levels of circulating LL37 and EV plasma concentration. Stimulation of healthy PBMC with active BD patient EVs induced heightened IL1ß, IFNα, IL6 and IP10 secretion compared to healthy and inactive BD EVs. Remarkably, when mixed with LL37, healthy plasma-EVs triggered a robust immune activation replicating the pathology inducing properties of BD EVs. The findings of this study could be of clinical interest in the management of BD, implicating LL37/EV association as one of the major contributors of BD pathogenesis. Abbreviations: BD: Behçet's disease; EV: extracellular vesicle; BB: binding buffer; AnV: annexin V; autologEV: autologous extracellular vesicles; alloEV: allogeneic extracellular vesicles.

Impaired toll like receptor-7 and 9 induced immune activation in chronic spinal cord injured patients contributes to immune dysfunction.

Reduced immune activation or immunosuppression is seen in patients withneurological diseases. Urinary and respiratory infections mainly manifested as septicemia and pneumonia are the most frequent complications following spinal cord injuries and they account for the majority of deaths. The underlying reason of these losses is believed to arise due to impaired immune responses to pathogens. Here, we hypothesized that susceptibility to infections of chronic spinal cord injured (SCI) patients might be due to impairment in recognition of pathogen associated molecular patterns and subsequently declining innate and adaptive immune responses that lead to immune dysfunction. We tested our hypothesis on healthy and chronic SCI patients with a level of injury above T-6. Donor PBMCs were isolated and stimulated with different toll like receptor ligands and T-cell inducers aiming to investigate whether chronic SCI patients display differential immune activation to multiple innate and adaptive immune cell stimulants. We demonstrate that SCI patients' B-cell and plasmacytoid dendritic cells retain their functionality in response to TLR7 and TLR9 ligand stimulation as they secreted similar levels of IL6 and IFNα. The immune dysfunction is not probably due to impaired T-cell function, since neither CD4+ T-cell dependent IFNγ producing cell number nor IL10 producing regulatory T-cells resulted different outcomes in response to PMA-Ionomycin and PHA-LPS stimulation, respectively. We showed that TLR7 dependent IFNγ and IP10 levels and TLR9 mediated APC function reduced substantially in SCI patients compared to healthy subjects. More importantly, IP10 producing monocytes were significantly fewer compared to healthy subjects in response to TLR7 and TLR9 stimulation of SCI PBMCs. When taken together this work implicated that these defects could contribute to persistent complications due to increased susceptibility to infections of chronic SCI patients.

Docetaxel enhances the cytotoxic effects of imatinib on Philadelphia positive human chronic myeloid leukemia cells.

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) results from a translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22 which generates BCR/ABL fusion protein and characterized by uncontrolled proliferation of immature white blood cells. Imatinib, a molecularly targeting anticancer agent, is used widely for the treatment of CML and showed significant activity in chronic and accelerated phases but much less in blast crisis phase. The resistance to imatinib especially in blast crisis phase is recognized as a major problem in the treatment of CML patients. Docetaxel is shown to arrest cells in G2/M phase of the cell cycle which makes cells more sensitive to chemo- and radiotherapy. In this study, we aimed to increase chemosensitivity of human K562 CML cells to imatinib in combination with docetaxel. Taken together, our results showed that the combination of imatinib and docetaxel decreased cellular proliferation and increased apoptosis in human K562 chronic myeloid leukemia cells as compared to any agent alone. Imatinib and docetaxel induced apoptosis through caspase-3 enzyme activity and mitochondrial membrane potential.