Engineering ROS-Responsive Bioscaffolds for Disrupting Myeloid Cell-Driven Immunosuppressive Niche to Enhance PD-L1 Blockade-Based Postablative Immunotherapy

The existence of inadequate ablation remains an important cause of treatment failure for loco-regional ablation therapies. Here, using a preclinical model, it is reported that inadequate microwave ablation (iMWA) induces immunosuppressive niche predominated by myeloid cells. The gene signature of ablated tumor presented by transcriptome analyses is highly correlated with immune checkpoint blocking (ICB) resistance. Thus, an in situ scaffold with synergistic delivery of IPI549 and anti-programmed death-ligand 1 blocking antibody (aPDL1) for postablative cancer immunotherapy is designed and engineered, in which IPI549 capable of targeting myeloid cells could disrupt the immunosuppressive niche and subsequently improve ICB-mediated antitumor immune response. Based on five mouse cancer models, it is demonstrated that this biomaterial system (aPDL1&IPI549@Gel) could mimic a "hot" tumor-immunity niche to inhibit tumor progression and metastasis, and protect cured mice against tumor rechallenge. This work enables a new standard-of-care paradigm for the immunotherapy of myeloid cells-mediated "cold" tumors after loco-regional inadequate practices.