Erythrocytes Used as Tumor Antigen Delivery System

Françoise Horand, director, R&D Operations, Erytech Pharma, discusses a study investigating the use of erythrocytes as a tumor antigen delivery system to target antigen-presenting cells and induce efficient immune response against tumors.

The innovative approach of Erytech for in situ cancer immunotherapy is to use the property of erythrocytes to be naturally phagocytosed by antigen-presenting cells. Various tumoral antigen can efficiently be loaded into erythrocytes which serve as carrier to specifically deliver the tumor antigen to antigen-presenting cells. Following 2 injections, an efficient and specific immune response is induced, resulting in a significant delay of tumor growth in mouse tumor models of melanoma and prostate cancer.

This new approach of tumor antigen delivery systems to induce immune response can be a very promising strategy in cancer immunotherapy.