Injectable transplantation system for anticancer in-situ cell therapy

Abstract

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. Traditional cancer therapy methods include surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or combinations of them all. In recent years, immunotherapy, as a novel therapeutic method by which the immune system is used to reject specific cancer. In this project, we are aiming to evaluate the feasibility of remodeling immunosurveillance into the tumor site, with an engineering, more particularly, functional materials-mediated cell therapeutic strategy by designing an injectable cell transplantation system for anti-cancer therapy. The RAW 264.7 cells are encapsulated in dual-layer hydrogel composite which is in injectable size. Followed by biochemical activation, the construct is able to constantly release therapeutic agent. In a long observation period, the cells inside the capsule gradually die in a spontaneous manner, which is regarded as an advantage of controllability. The expression of a series of cytokines is switched on or up-regulated to induce the apoptosis of tumor cells. The different cell viability tests including live-dead assay, apoptosis test and WST-1 assay suggest that the tumor cells which are cocultured with post 6 hours LPS challenge agarose encapsulated constructs exhibit distinctively decreased levels of cell viability.