ABSTRACT
Immunotherapy is a burgeoning field that holds promise for making an impact in the treatment of incurable disorders. The major challenge lies in delivering an immunotherapy to a specific target without causing harm to healthy tissues or inducing a feedback pathway that counteracts the mechanism of the immunotherapy. The versatility of nanoparticles suggests that they can easily elevate immunotherapy efficacy to another level, but in reality, their efficacy is limited by a set of unique drug delivery problems. Nanoparticle size is a design parameter that can be tuned to enhance the targeted delivery and subsequent efficacy of nanoparticle immunotherapies. Nanoparticles for immunotherapy can also be targeted to dendritic cells and macrophages through functionalization with mannose, which binds to the mannose receptor. It is important to realize that a single design modification will likely not maximize site-specific delivery, minimize off-target accumulation, and optimize immunotherapy delivery timing, tissue penetration, and intracellular delivery.
