Mild photothermal therapy potentiates anti-PD-L1 treatment for immunologically cold tumors via an all-in-one and all-in-control strategy

One of the main challenges for immune checkpoint blockade antibodies lies in malignancies with limited T-cell responses or immunologically “cold” tumors. Inspired by the capability of fever-like heat in inducing an immune-favorable tumor microenvironment, mild photothermal therapy (PTT) is proposed to sensitize tumors to immune checkpoint inhibition and turn “cold” tumors “hot.” Here we present a combined all-in-one and all-in-control strategy to realize a local symbiotic mild photothermal-assisted immunotherapy (SMPAI). We load both a near-infrared (NIR) photothermal agent IR820 and a programmed death-ligand 1 antibody (aPD-L1) into a lipid gel depot with a favorable property of thermally reversible gel-to-sol phase transition. Manually controlled NIR irradiation regulates the release of aPD-L1 and, more importantly, increases the recruitment of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and boosts T-cell activity against tumors. In vivo antitumor studies on 4T1 and B16F10 models demonstrate that SMPAI is an effective and promising strategy for treating “cold” tumors.