A multi-effective and long-acting immunotherapy through one single hydrogel based injection

A dual-effective (photothermal and immune) therapy employing gold nanorods (AuNRs) with a drug (two macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) inhibitors) sustained release hydrogel was designed in this paper. The subsequent cellular and animal studies demonstrated that the proposed therapy can not only inhibit the proliferation, migration, and recurrence of cancer cells, but also improve the immune function (increase the infiltration of CD8+ killer T cells in tumors) without the traditional multiple injections of expensive immune drugs.