Chitosan nanobubbles as a combined chemo-immunotherapy strategy against melanoma

Introduction: Chitosan nanobubbles (NBs) represent a promising strategy to overcome the limitations of anticancer drugs, allowing site-specific delivery and drug bioavailability improvement. Moreover, they can be a tool to combine chemotherapy and immunotherapy (1). Recently, the inducible T-cell co-stimulator (ICOS)/ICOS ligand (ICOSL) signaling has emerged as an interesting immunomodulatory pathway with anti-invasion activity (2). The work aims at investigating the effects of paclitaxel (PTX) loaded in nanobubbles decorated with ICOS-Fc in reducing in vitro and in vivo melanoma cell growth and invasivity.

Chiara Dianzani – Assistant professor, Dep. of Drug Science and Technology, University of Turin; Stefania Pizzimenti – Associate Professor, Dep. of Drug Science and Technology, University of Turin; Roberta Cavalli – Full Professor, Dep. of Drug Science and Technology, University of Turin