A coordinative dendrimer-based nanovaccine for cancer treatment

Cancer vaccines have attracted tremendous interest in the field of cancer immunotherapy due to their ability to trigger tumor-specific immune responses to destroy cancer cells. Herein, we demonstrate that dendrimers coordinated with manganese ions (GT-Mn²⁺) could self-assemble with peptides to form a cancer vaccine, which could be internalized by dendritic cells (DCs) via specific macropinocytosis-dependent and lipid-raft-related pathways and then dissociated gradually to release peptides to achieve efficient antigen cross-presentation and stimulate the cGAS-STING pathway. Additionally, GT-Mn²⁺ could package multiple neoantigens to form an effective “personalized” cancer vaccine and has exhibited excellent therapeutic effects when used in combination with anti-PD-L1. Thus, our work presents an innovative peptide carrier to construct an effective “personalized” cancer vaccine that shows great promise to achieve effective cancer immunotherapy for different patients in clinic.