T Cell Membrane Mimicking Nanoparticles with Bioorthogonal Targeting and Immune Recognition for Enhanced Photothermal Therapy

Due to specific immune recognition receptors on the surface of T cells, their membranes are promising mimic nanocarriers for delivering drugs to tumor lesions. However, this single targeting strategy potentially compromises therapy efficacy for tumor targeting due to inter- and intra-heterogeneity of tumors. Azide (N3) or bicyclo [6.1.0] nonyne (BCN) modified unnatural sugars can be successfully incorporated into surface glycans of various tumor cells as artificial receptors, which is expected to overcome the insufficiency of single targeting. Based on this artificial tumor targeting strategy, indocyanine green nanoparticles (INPs) coated with N3-labeled T cell membrane (N3-TINPs) are constructed, which can specifically target the natural antigen and BCN artificial receptors on tumors through immune recognition and bioorthogonal chemistry, respectively. The results show that the fluorescence intensity in the tumors of mice treated with N3-TINPs is 1.5 fold compared with that of the mice treated with unlabeled TINPs. The accumulated N3-TINPs in the tumor significantly increase the photothermal therapeutic effect without adverse effect. Therefore, this T cell membrane mimicking nanoparticles based bioorthogonal chemistry may provide an alternative artificial targeting strategy for further tumor targeting photothermal therapy.