Cancer drugs that stimulate the body’s immune system to attack tumors are a promising way to treat many types of cancer. However, some of these drugs produce too much systemic inflammation when delivered intravenously, making them harmful to use in patients.
MIT researchers have now come up with a possible way to get around that obstacle. In a new study, they showed that when immunostimulatory prodrugs — inactive drugs that require activation in the body — are tuned for optimal activation timing, the drugs provoke the immune system to attack tumors without the side effects that occur when the active form of the drug is given.
The researchers designed prodrugs with bottlebrush-like structures based on a class of compounds called imidazoquinolines (IMDs). Mice treated with these bottlebrush prodrugs designed with optimized activation kinetics showed a significant reduction in tumor growth, with no side effects. The researchers hope that this approach could be used to boost immune system responses in cancer patients, especially when combined with other immunotherapy drugs or cancer vaccines.
