Emerging Advances in Nanomedicine for Targeted Cancer Photoimmunotherapy and Photo-Immunometabolic Therapy

Immunotherapy has advanced quickly as a promising new approach for cancer treatment, but its therapeutic efficacy and clinical translation have lagged expectations, because of its inability to directly target tumors, low response rates, and nonspecific immune reactions. Anticancer therapies like photodynamic therapy (PDT) show promise over traditional modalities, as they can induce a specific type of tumor cell death known as immunogenic cell death (ICD) to boost the immune response against solid tumors. However, successful therapeutic outcomes cannot be achieved with PDT-driven ICD-based single-modal cancer immunotherapy alone, which necessitates the combination of ICD-based PDT with other immunotherapies. Therefore, to achieve effective PDT-driven immunotherapy, it is imperative to enhance the in vivo delivery efficiency of photosensitizers and immuno agents, along with reducing the off-target side effects, to develop comprehensive therapeutic strategies like photo-immunotherapy and photo-immunometabolic therapy. Herein, this review discusses the recent advances in the field at the intersection of PDT, immunoconjugates, nanotechnology, and ICD, majorly focusing on their molecular design and nanoengineering, and their induced synergistic effects. Finally, the opportunities and current challenges encountered in this field, along with the significant advancements made in recent years, have been highlighted. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Oncologic Disease Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Emerging Technologies Toxicology and Regulatory Issues in Nanomedicine > Toxicology of Nanomaterials.