▲Professor Jun-O Jin and Researcher So-Jung Kim

The research team, led by Professor Jun-O Jin and Researcher So-Jung Kim from the Department of Microbiology at Asan Medical Center, has developed a therapeutic vaccine for cancer using surface proteins obtained from tumor cells as an antigen.

The research team created ‘artificial immunogenic cell death lipid nanoparticles (AiLNPs)’ to induce specific immune activity against cancer antigens by decorating lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) containing cancer cell surface proteins with HMG-box1 and calreticulin proteins, indicators of immunogenic cell death (ICD). When administered to mice, AoLNPs were observed to activate dendritic cells, which in turn induced the activation of T cells, the immune cells responsible for fighting against cancer. Additionally, the cancer cell surface proteins contained in AiLNPs were found to activate antigen-specific T-cells, directly killing cancer cells and blocking the growth of colon and lung cancer in mice.

The team also discovered that AiLNPs synthesized with breast cancer membrane proteins induce the activation of dendritic cells in the peripheral blood to activate antigen-specific T-cells, effectively killing tumor cells.

Professor Jun-O Jin commented, "Through this research, we have demonstrated the efficacy of AiLNPs as a therapeutic vaccine for cancer. We anticipate that this technology, which uses patient cancer cells obtained through biopsy or surgery, to be applied in the future for the development of vaccines to prevent cancer recurrence and metastasis.”

The research was conducted as part of a Basic Research Laboratory Project supported by the Ministry of Science and ITC and the National Research Foundation of Korea. The research findings were recently published in ‘Advanced Functional Materials.’