Nanoparticle Vaccines Adopting Virus-like Features for Enhanced Immune Potentiation

Chattopadhyay, Saborni; Chen, Jui-Yi; Chen, Hui-Wen; Hu, Che-Ming Jack

Also belonging to the class of lipid-based nanoparticles are an emerging class of lipoplexes, which consist of cationic lipid derivatives for the complexation with nucleic acids [10, 51, 52] . Immunostimulatory RNAs or mRNAs encoding specific antigen targets have been formulated into lipoplexes to trigger immune responses. The function of these lipoplexes can be likened to the immune response induction by RNA viruses [53] . As RNAs are delivered intracellularly by lipoplexes, they activate innate immune receptors, leading to an upregulation of type I interferons, which may further trigger a multitude of downstream immunological pathways [54] . Concurrently, these RNAs are translated into antigens of interest, thereby promoting an antigen-specific immune response. Lipoplexes carrying the mRNA of target antigens have recently been shown in a Phase I clinical trial to induce strong cellular responses against tumor antigens in humans [10] .