Nanoparticle design to induce tumor immunity and challenge the suppressive tumor microenvironment

• Adjuvanted particulate vaccines for dendritic cell targeting in vivo are on the rise.
• Tumor-mediated immune suppression is a major hurdle in immunotherapy.
• Clever particle design can help to overcome the suppressive tumor microenvironment.
• Combining established therapies with immunotherapy might be way of the future.

Over the years research in the field of cancer immunotherapy has flourished, bringing about crucial breakthroughs, but at the same time revealing new and important pathways of immune suppression that put a break on the success of cancer immunotherapy. This review focuses on how nano- and micromaterials can be used to induce antitumor immune responses and what their role in overcoming immune suppression could be. It is now beyond question that this requires elegantly designed particles that can reach their target cells, deliver antigenic cargo and most importantly immune stimulants in order to provoke and sustain antitumor immunity.

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