Bursts of radiation and vesicles-based immunotherapy suppress brain cancer growth

Short bursts of radiation therapy dramatically enhanced the efficiency of targeting glioblastomas with natural nanoparticle-based immunotherapy, thus suppressing growth of the deadly tumor, inducing anti-tumor immunity and prolonging survival in animal models, a research team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has discovered. The combined strategy, described in ACS Nano, uses extracellular vesicles (EVs) to deliver the immunotherapeutic to the brain, bridging the blood-brain barrier and reversing immune suppression of both the tumor and the surrounding microenvironment.