Improving Cancer Immunotherapy by Cell Membrane-Camouflaged Nanoparticles

Cancer immunotherapy has received tremendous attention in the past decade owing to its clinical successes with the use of immune-checkpoint inhibition and chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy. However, only a small proportion of the patients have benefited from these immunotherapeutic drugs, which has raised concerns about the low response rate and immune-related adverse events. Nanomedicines have served as a paradigm for preferential tumor accumulation but still confront issues such as poor circulation and insufficient tumor accumulation. By virtue of coating nanoparticles with cell membranes from diverse cell sources, active proteins on cell membranes can impart a variety of desired functionalities or supplementary therapeutic effects to nanoparticles, providing ways for enhanced cancer immunotherapy. In this review, the recent advances of cell membrane camouflaged nanoparticles applied to the improved immunotherapy are discussed on the basis of different sources of cell membranes and corresponding working mechanisms. These biomimetic nanoparticles can potentially deliver therapeutic agents to the designated sites and actively engage in particular stages of the cancer immunity cycle, eliciting antitumor immunity with less off-target toxicities.