Nanoassembly with self-regulated magnetic thermal therapy and controlled immuno-modulating agent release for improved immune response

Cancer immunotherapy is an emerging cancer therapeutic method by activating the patient's immune system but suffers from low immunogenicity at tumor sites. Fever-like heat is known to modulate an immune-friendly tumor microenvironment. Here, temperature-responsive iron oxide nanoassemblies (IONAs) are developed by crosslinking iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and loaded with JQ1 (JQ1/IONAs), an immuno-modulating agent known to down-regulate PD-L1. In the presence of an alternating magnetic field (AMF), the IONAs demonstrate a much more effective magnetic thermal effect than IONPs and are responsively disassembled to prevent overheating. Compared with IONPs + AMF (∼ 41 °C) and unresponsive nanoassemblies (uIONAs) + AMF (∼ 50 °C), the IONAs + AMF with a temperature heated around 45 °C show a much better immune response and anti-tumor effect. Further combining the mild thermal therapy with controlled release of JQ1, the JQ1/IONAs + AMF completely eradicate the primary tumors and trigger a strong immune effect to inhibit the distant tumor growth as well as prevent tumor recurrence and metastasis. Our JQ1/IONAs not only provide a magnetic thermal agent with effective heating and temperature self-regulation ability but also serve as a heat-triggered JQ1 carrier to spontaneously combine mild magnetic thermal therapy with immune checkpoint blockade therapy.