Nanomedicine for autoimmune diseases and cancer immunotherapy

Due to their small size and physicochemical properties, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) have great potential as a nanomedicine in the fight against cancer, as they have proven effective for targeted drug release and in diagnosis by magnetic resonance imaging. SPIONs also show considerable promise for two additional cancer therapies, intracellular hyperthermia induction and targeting in cell transfer.

Results to date using SPIONs in in vitro studies and in animal models suggest potential for rapid translation of these technologies to clinical practice. This development has nonetheless been delayed in part by a lack of basic knowledge of SPION-induced molecular and cellular mechanisms and the routes that regulate SPION degradation in the organism, both of which affect the therapeutic effectiveness of SPIONs and their accumulation and long-term toxicity.

The overall objective of our group is to understand SPION-mediated molecular and cellular mechanisms in distinct biomedical applications oriented to cancer treatment, for use of this knowledge to improving SPION functional design for specific biomedical purposes in antitumor therapy. We pursue five specific objectives: 1) study of the ability of intracellularly loaded SPIONs to induce biological effects following the application of an AMF, to identify effects that depend on temperature increase or are mediated by other mechanisms; 2) comparative analysis of the effectiveness of various nanoparticle-targeting approaches in antitumor therapies; 3) study of SPION-induced epigenetic changes in cell lines and the possible contribution of AMF application in intracellular hyperthermia treatment on these changes; 4) study of SPION degradation and transformation within lysosomes; and 5) potentiation of antitumor therapy by adoptive transfer of NK cells and CD8+ T cells using SPIONs.