Department of General Surgery, Shanghai Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China.
Department of Dermatology, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
Drug Deliv. 2023 Dec;30(1):2161670. doi: 10.1080/10717544.2022.2161670.
Gastrointestinal tumors are the most common cancers with the highest morbidity and mortality worldwide. Surgery accompanied by chemotherapy, radiotherapy and targeted therapy remains the first option for gastrointestinal tumors. However, poor specificity for tumor cells of these postoperative treatments often leads to severe side effects and poor prognosis. Tumor immunotherapy, including checkpoint blockade and tumor vaccines, has developed rapidly in recent years, showing good curative effects and minimal side effects in the treatment of gastrointestinal tumors. National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines recommend tumor immunotherapy as part of the treatment of gastrointestinal tumors. However, the heterogeneity of tumor cells, complicacy of the tumor microenvironment and poor tumor immunogenicity hamper the effectiveness of tumor immunotherapy. Hydrogels, defined as three-dimensional, hydrophilic, and water-insoluble polymeric networks, could significantly improve the overall response rate of immunotherapy due to their superior drug loading efficacy, controlled release and drug codelivery ability. In this article, we briefly describe the research progress made in recent years on hydrogel delivery systems in immunotherapy for gastrointestinal tumors and discuss the potential future application prospects and challenges to provide a reference for the clinical application of hydrogels in tumor immunotherapy.
胃肠道肿瘤是全球最常见的癌症，发病率和死亡率最高。手术联合化疗、放疗和靶向治疗仍然是胃肠道肿瘤的首选治疗方法。然而，这些术后治疗对肿瘤细胞的特异性差，往往导致严重的副作用和预后不良。肿瘤免疫治疗，包括检查点阻断和肿瘤疫苗，近年来发展迅速，在胃肠道肿瘤的治疗中显示出良好的疗效和最小的副作用。美国国家综合癌症网络指南建议将肿瘤免疫治疗作为胃肠道肿瘤治疗的一部分。然而，肿瘤细胞的异质性、肿瘤微环境的复杂性和肿瘤免疫原性差阻碍了肿瘤免疫治疗的效果。水凝胶定义为三维、亲水性和不溶于水的聚合物网络，由于其优异的药物负载效率、控制释放和药物共递送能力，可显著提高免疫治疗的总体反应率。本文简要描述了近年来在胃肠道肿瘤免疫治疗中水凝胶递送系统的研究进展，并讨论了其潜在的未来应用前景和挑战，为水凝胶在肿瘤免疫治疗中的临床应用提供参考。
