Revolutionary Impact of Nanovaccines on Immunotherapy

Publication date: Available online 18 November 2014 Source:New Horizons in Translational Medicine Author(s): Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi , Hélder A. Santos Over the past few decades, public health has been immensely improved by preventing various types of diseases using vaccination, a method implying attenuated, killed or part of a microorganism to activate the immune system against it. Recently, nanovaccines have attracted a lot of attention as a new approach for enhancing the immune responses against immunogenic molecules. A wide variety of nanomaterials are reported as proper candidates for nano-vaccination. Currently, the focus of nanovaccines researches are developing new formulations that trigger strong anti-cancer responses by presenting tumor antigens either directly to T immune cells or indirectly to antigen-presenting cells, holding great promise for safe, non-invasive, and cost-effective therapy of cancer. This review focuses on the critical aspects in the design of biomaterial based nanovaccines and reviews the state of the art of the formulations in clinical development and those currently marketed. Focal points: • Bedside Understanding the complex potential of the immune system to prevent and treat various diseases such as cancer, will contribute to the scientific advance in the development of new therapeutic strategies and will allow for the discovery of alternative treatments for deadly diseases. • Benchside Many of the immunostimulative pathways i...
Source: New Horizons in Translational Medicine - Category: Research Source Type: research