Spherical Nucleic Acids as Precision Therapeutics for the Treatment of Cancer-From Bench to Bedside

Simple Summary Nanotechnology enables new ways to diagnose and treat cancer. Nanomedicines can increase payload concentration at the disease site, reduce toxicity, and enhance therapeutic effects compared to drugs in their free form. Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) emerged as a new class of oligonucleotide nanotherapeutics that are currently being explored as gene-regulatory and immunostimulatory architectures to overcome drug resistance and immunosuppression in solid tumors. This review highlights seminal studies that identified SNAs as a powerful platform for gene regulation, the activation of innate immunity, and the development of next-generation cancer vaccines, discusses recent efforts to translate fundamental discovery from the laboratory into the clinic, and provides an outlook on future research aimed at harnessing the full therapeutic potential of the SNA platform. Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) emerged as a new class of nanotherapeutics consisting of a nanoparticle core densely functionalized with a shell of radially oriented synthetic oligonucleotides. The unique three-dimensional architecture of SNAs protects the oligonucleotides from nuclease-mediated degradation, increases oligonucleotide bioavailability, and in the absence of auxiliary transfection agents, enables robust uptake into tumor and immune cells through polyvalent association with cell surface pattern recognition receptors. When composed of gene-regulatory small interfering (si)RNA or immunostimulatory DNA or RNA oligonucleotides, SNAs silence gene expression and induce immune responses superior to those raised by the oligonucleotides in their free form. Early phase clinical trials of gene-regulatory siRNA-based SNAs in glioblastoma (NCT03020017) and immunostimulatory Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9)-agonistic SNAs carrying unmethylated CpG-rich oligonucleotides in solid tumors (NCT03086278) have shown that SNAs represent a safe, brain-penetrant therapy for inhibiting oncogene expression and stimulating immune responses against tumors. This review focuses on the application of SNAs as precision cancer therapeutics, summarizes the findings from first-in-human clinical trials of SNAs in solid tumors, describes the most recent preclinical efforts to rationally design next-generation multimodal SNA architectures, and provides an outlook on future efforts to maximize the anti-neoplastic activity of the SNA platform.

Automated summary

Nanotechnology enables new ways to diagnose and treat cancer. Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) have emerged as a novel class of nanotherapeutics that can regulate genes, activate immune responses, and develop cancer vaccines. Early clinical trials have shown that SNAs are safe and effective in inhibiting oncogene expression and stimulating immune responses against tumors.