Acidity-Activatable Dynamic Nanoparticles Boosting Ferroptotic Cell Death for Immunotherapy of Cancer

Immunotherapy shows promising therapeutic potential for long-term tumor regression. However, current cancer immunotherapy displays a low response rate due to insufficient immunogenicity of the tumor cells. To address these challenges, herein, intracellular-acidity-activatable dynamic nanoparticles for eliciting immunogenicity by inducing ferroptosis of the tumor cells are engineered. The nanoparticles are engineered by integrating an ionizable block copolymer and acid-liable phenylboronate ester (PBE) dynamic covalent bonds for tumor-specific delivery of the ferroptosis inducer, a glutathione peroxidase 4 inhibitor RSL-3. The nanoparticles can stably encapsulate RSL-3 inside the hydrophobic core via π–π stacking interaction with the PBE groups at neutral pH (pH = 7.4), while releasing the payload in the endocytic vesicles (pH = 5.8–6.2) by acidity-triggered cleavage of the PBE dynamic covalent bonds. Furthermore, the nanoparticles can perform acid-activatable photodynamic therapy by protonation of the ionizable core, and significantly recruit tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes for interferon gamma secretion, and thus sensitize the tumor cells to RSL-3-inducible ferroptosis. The combination of nanoparticle-induced ferroptosis and blockade of programmed death ligand 1 efficiently inhibits growth of B16-F10 melanoma tumor and lung metastasis of 4T1 breast tumors, suggesting the promising potential of ferroptosis induction for promoting cancer immunotherapy.