Cellular backpacks for macrophage immunotherapy- A Review

Worldwide, the most feared disease is cancer and more than 10 million people fall prey to it every year. For curing a disease, destroying the agent causing disease is required in the host, within the same environment. The utmost promising treatment is immunotherapy for cancer, and it has set a new pattern leading to many breakthroughs. Compared with norms of care such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery; immunotherapies like adoptive cellular immunotherapy, antibodies, vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors have achieved great heights in terms of its success rate and has brought remarkable growth in terms of quality of life and survival. There are limitations like adverse effects, inconsistent efficiency, and with regards to cancer low resistance and antitumor response rate, despite all the progress made. Between the in-built and adaptive immunity, co-operation is very crucial, for a long-lasting and efficacious antitumor response. Therapeutic approaches combined or based with macrophages were made in order to bypass these challenges, for the better treatment of various therapies to cure and reduce the severity of cancer. The role of macrophages and backpacks with the advancement of nanotechnology in current immunotherapy is vital for drug administration and will be an asset in the present era.