Development of a lipoplex-type mRNA carrier composed of an ionizable lipid with a vitamin E scaffold and the KALA peptide for use as an ex vivo dendritic cell-based cancer vaccine

🥉 Top 5% JournalAug 7, 2019Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society

Development of a vitamin E-based mRNA delivery system with KALA peptide for dendritic cell cancer vaccines

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Abstract

The transfection of mRNAs with the ssPalmE-KALA carrier yielded significantly higher protein expression and proinflammatory cytokine production in murine dendritic cells.

ssPalmE-KALA is a combination of a lipid nanoparticle and a cationic peptide designed for mRNA delivery to dendritic cells.
Transfection with ssPalmE-KALA outperformed ssPalmM-KALA in inducing immune responses in murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells.
Proteomic analyses indicate that ssPalmM-KALA may activate a down-regulatory pathway that limits protein expression, unlike ssPalmE-KALA.
Vaccination with dendritic cells transfected with an ovalbumin-encoding mRNA led to the induction of ovalbumin-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activity in vivo.
The ssPalmE-KALA platform demonstrated significant prophylactic anti-tumor effects in a model expressing ovalbumin.

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A dendritic cells (DCs)-based vaccine (DC-vaccine) system is an attractive technology for eliciting antigen-specific immune responses that can protect subjects from infectious diseases and for curing various types of cancers. For the insertion of a foreign antigen to DCs, the transfection of an antigen-coding mRNA to the cells is a promising approach. In order to introduce an antigen, a carrier for mRNA transfection is required, since the mRNA molecule per se is unstable in serum-containing medium. We previously reported on an ionizable lipid-like material with vitamin E-scaffolds (ssPalmE) as a material for a lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based carrier for nucleic acids. In the present study, we report on the development of a lipoplex-type mRNA carrier for use as a DC-vaccine by using a combination of an ssPalmE-LNP and an α-helical cationic peptide "KALA" (ssPalmE-KALA). The transfection of mRNAs complexed with the ssPalmE-KALA achieved a significantly higher protein expression and the production of proinflammatory cytokines from murine bone marrow derived DCs (BMDCs) in comparison with a lipoplex that was prepared with an ssPalm with fatty acid-scaffolds (myristic acid; ssPalmM-KALA). A cellular uptake process and a pH-responsive membrane-destabilization activity cannot explain the preferred protein expression and immune-stimulation caused by the ssPalmE-KALA. Proteomic analyses suggest that transfection with the ssPalmM-KALA stimulates a down-regulatory pathway of translation, while the transfection with the ssPalmE-KALA does not stimulate it. In the vaccination with the BMDCs that were preliminarily transfected with an ovalbumin (OVA)-encoding mRNA elicited the induction OVA specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activity in vivo. In parallel, the vaccination induced significant prophylactic anti-tumor effects against a model tumor that stably expressed the OVA protein. Based on the above findings, the ssPalmE-KALA appears to be a potent ex vivo DCs-based RNA vaccine platform.

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