Effect of intra-tumoral magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia and viral nanoparticle immunogenicity on primary and metastatic cancer

Although there is long association of medical hyperthermia and immune stimulation, the relative lack of a quantifiable and reproducible effect has limited the utility and advancement of this relationship in preclinical/clinical cancer and non-cancer settings. Recent cancer-based immune findings (immune checkpoint modulators etc.) including improved mechanistic understanding and biological tools now make it possible to modify and exploit the immune system to benefit conventional cancer treatments such as radiation and hyperthermia. Based on the prior experience of our research group including; cancer-based heat therapy, magnetic nanoparticle (mNP) hyperthermia, radiation biology, cancer immunology and Cowpea Mosaic Virus that has been engineered to over express antigenic proteins without RNA or DNA (eCPMV/VLP). This research was designed to determine if and how the intra-tumoral delivery of mNP hyperthermia and VLP can work together to improve local and systemic tumor treatment efficacy. Using the C3H mouse/MTG-B mammary adenocarcinoma cell model and the C57-B6 mouse/B-16-F10 melanoma cancer cell model, our data suggests the appropriate combination of intra-tumoral mNP heat (e.g. 43°C/30-60 minutes) and VLP (100 μg/200 mm³ tumor) not only result in significant primary tumor regression but the creation a systemic immune reaction that has the potential to retard secondary tumor growth (abscopal effect) and resist tumor rechallenge. Molecular data from these experiments suggest treatment based cell damage and immune signals such as Heat Shock Protein (HSP) 70/90, calreticulin, MTA1 and CD47 are potential targets that can be exploited to enhance the local and systemic (abscopal effect) immune potential of hyperthermia cancer treatment.