Progress of Immune‐Inducible Biomaterials for Post‐Ablation Cancers

The presence of residual tumors after ablative therapies poses a significant challenge, generally resulting in recurrence and metastases. This review offers a concise overview of immune-inducible biomaterials from the perspective of the cancer-immunity cycle, and how they enhance antitumor immunity through diverse mechanisms following ablative therapies, enabling efficient clearance of residual tumors.

Abstract

Locoregional ablation therapies have considerable potential in eradicating cancers by killing tumor cells directly with different mechanisms, inducing immunogenic cell death, and subsequently forming the “in situ vaccine”. Nevertheless, a short period of immune time post-ablation and rapidly reversed to an immunosuppressed state, may lead to a higher chance of tumor recurrence and metastasis. Therefore, boosting the efficacy of immunity and/or prolonging the duration of organismal immunity seem to be the key to suppressing tumor progression after minimally invasive ablation therapies. Currently, a number of nanoplatforms for post-ablation immunotherapy are developed to address this challenge, including amplifying antitumor immunostimulatory signals, modulating immunosuppressive microenvironment, and improving antitumor immune responses. These approaches portend great promise for applications to improve local control and prevent tumor recurrence and distant metastasis. This review provides a concise overview of recent advances in immune-inducible biomaterials for enhancing post-ablation antitumor immunity, as well as strategies for their application in targeted drug delivery and sustained release to potentiate immune responses. Furthermore, main obstacles and potential breakthroughs for future development are discussed and prospected, providing insights to drive further innovation in immune-inducible biomaterials for post-ablation cancers.