Therapeutic Cancer Vaccination via Thiol-Mediated Adjuvant Delivery

The overall goal of my thesis work is to develop polymeric materials to manipulate theimmune system, primarily in a pro-inflammatory context for cancer treatment. While immunotherapy has totally revolutionized cancer care, suboptimal response rates leave room for improvements to the standard of care. Many drug delivery approaches have been taken to enhance therapeutic efficacy of drugs and prevent systemic toxicities. In Chapter 1, I provide a brief background on the drug delivery field and highlight recent advancements in the strategic delivery of immunomodulatory drugs. In Chapter 2, I describe in detail the delivery platform that is the heart of my experimental thesis work. The platform exploits the fundamental metabolic dysregulation of cancer cells by binding to cancer cell surfaces and cellular debris. The polymer carries an immune-stimulating adjuvant, which can activate antigen-presenting cells and induce a specific immune response to cancer neoantigens. In this chapter, I explore the material's therapeutic efficacy in murine solid tumor models like melanoma and breast cancer. Chapter 3 describes the implementation of the therapeutic for hematological malignancies, where intravenous injection replaces intratumoral injection. Finally, in Chapter 4, I discuss the conclusions and limitations of this work and offer future research directions for the therapeutic manipulation of the immune system via polymeric materials.