Applications of Gold Nanoparticles in Nanomedicine: Recent Advances in Vaccines †

Carabineiro, Sónia Alexandra Correia

Au nanoparticle immunotherapies are well suited for synergistic combination therapy with existing cancer therapies such as photothermal ablation [59, 87] . All these features suggest that gold nanoparticle-based antigen delivery systems may be a useful vaccine technology that is able to prevent and/or treat cancer. The several functionalities of gold nanoparticles make them promising vehicles for immune therapies, especially for combinatorial treatment approaches that target multiple immune pathways (Figure 3) . A polymerizable version of the Tn-antigen glycan was synthesized and the polymers were conjugated to gold nanoparticles, producing nanoscale glycoconjugates [91] . These nanomaterials generated a strong and long-lasting production of antibodies, selective to the Tn-antigen glycan and cross-reactive toward mucin proteins displaying Tn, and thus represent a simple approach to the synthesis of anticancer vaccines.