Engineering Immunity to Disease Using Nanotechnology

Recently, immunotherapy has revolutionized the prevention, management, and treatment of disease, establishing new clinical paradigms that are extending patients’ lives and preventing the transmission of infectious agents. The principal goal of immunotherapy is to engineer immune responses that can effectively eliminate diseased cells and pathogens while protecting healthy cells from aberrant immune activity. Despite its successes, numerous challenges remain in the development of effective immunotherapies, including severe toxicities, limited response rates, and the inability to protect against or prevent disease evolution and immune escape. Nanomaterial technologies are being investigated to overcome these challenges given their proven ability to alter the spatiotemporal profile of therapies for enhanced clinical outcomes. This book chapter discusses the design and application of nanomaterial immunotherapies for the prevention and treatment of disease, including cancer, infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases. It covers foundational concepts in immunology and nanomaterials engineering, including design considerations for the development of safe and efficacious nanomaterial immunotherapies. The application of nanomaterials to achieve novel immunotherapeutic mechanisms of action and to enhance the potency, safety, and durability of genetic, molecular, and cellular immunotherapies is then discussed in detail. Finally, a brief outlook on the design and development of future nanomaterial immunotherapies is presented.