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Nanomaterials in Cancer: Focus on Molecular Targeting and Immunotherapy

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Nanoscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 January 2025 | Viewed by 2085

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Pharmacy, University of Patras, GR 26500 Rion, Greece
Interests: cancer; biomaterials; nanotechnology; nanomedicine; theranostics; targeted nanomedicine; stimuli-responsiveness
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There has been an intense research interest in the applications of nanomaterials in the diagnosis and therapeutics of cancers in the last decade, resulting in great advancements in the field of targeted-delivery nanomedicines. Nanoscience has focused on cancer therapy by exploiting the structural design of stimuli-responsive nanomaterials in combination with gene therapies, drug storage, and medical imaging using external stimuli such as radiotherapy, focused ultrasounds, photodynamic/photothermal chemotherapy, and hyperthermia to achieve improved effectiveness. Despite the great achievements of nanomaterials, solid tumors raise particularly important challenges, largely due to their complex and heterogenic microenvironment.

In the fight against solid tumors, newly developed nanomaterials have been designed to combat the challenges of heterogenic vasculature, dense stroma, extracellular matrix, hypoxia, and pH gradient acidosis. A crucial part of the imminent development of efficacious tumor therapies is played by molecular-targeting nanomaterials designed to interfere with tumor molecular abnormalities by delivering silencing RNA (siRNA) and micro RNA to sites for gene regulation. The ultimate goal of targeted molecular nanomaterials is the molecular reprogramming of host immune responses against tumor cells, tumor-associated macrophages (TAM), cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), and cancer stem cells (CSCs). To this end, immunotherapies have received a lot of attention for regulating the host immune system’s natural defense mechanisms in order to inhibit primary, adaptive, and acquired resistance, and to deliver immunomodulatory therapeutics. The most recent example of a molecular therapy is that of CAR T cells against blood cancer.

I would like to invite you to submit research or reviews for this Special Issue with a focus on nanomaterials used for molecular targeting and immunotherapeutics.

Dr. Athina Angelopoulou
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • cancer
  • nanomaterials
  • molecular targeting
  • immunotherapy
  • gene therapy
  • checkpoint inhibitors
  • adoptive T-cell therapy

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

30 pages, 1610 KiB  
Review
Nanostructured Biomaterials in 3D Tumor Tissue Engineering Scaffolds: Regenerative Medicine and Immunotherapies
by Athina Angelopoulou
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25(10), 5414; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25105414 - 16 May 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1698
Abstract
The evaluation of nanostructured biomaterials and medicines is associated with 2D cultures that provide insight into biological mechanisms at the molecular level, while critical aspects of the tumor microenvironment (TME) are provided by the study of animal xenograft models. More realistic models that [...] Read more.
The evaluation of nanostructured biomaterials and medicines is associated with 2D cultures that provide insight into biological mechanisms at the molecular level, while critical aspects of the tumor microenvironment (TME) are provided by the study of animal xenograft models. More realistic models that can histologically reproduce human tumors are provided by tissue engineering methods of co-culturing cells of varied phenotypes to provide 3D tumor spheroids that recapitulate the dynamic TME in 3D matrices. The novel approaches of creating 3D tumor models are combined with tumor tissue engineering (TTE) scaffolds including hydrogels, bioprinted materials, decellularized tissues, fibrous and nanostructured matrices. This review focuses on the use of nanostructured materials in cancer therapy and regeneration, and the development of realistic models for studying TME molecular and immune characteristics. Tissue regeneration is an important aspect of TTE scaffolds used for restoring the normal function of the tissues, while providing cancer treatment. Thus, this article reports recent advancements in the development of 3D TTE models for antitumor drug screening, studying tumor metastasis, and tissue regeneration. Also, this review identifies the significant opportunities of using 3D TTE scaffolds in the evaluation of the immunological mechanisms and processes involved in the application of immunotherapies. Full article
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