Karolinska Institute study describes “message in a bottle” delivery of targeted cancer treatment

Extracellular vesicles are small membrane bubbles that cells can send to each other to communicate information. Researchers at Sweden&rsquo;s Karolinska Institute  announced they have successfully delivered targeted cancer treatment via these extracellular vesicles in new study  published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. In the study, the treatment reduced tumor growth and improved survival when tested in mice.
Targeted therapies with antibodies have led to major improvements in cancer therapy over the last several decades. A main target of many of these therapies is the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and its ligand PD-L1. Despite the overexpression of PD-L1 in various malignancies, only a subset of patients has a durable response. Many strategies have been employed to improve response rate, such as combined chemotherapy approaches, multiple checkpoint inhibition and other approaches to stimulate the immune system. However, these strategies are limited in the coordinated delivery of the different therapeutics to the target of interest.