Abstract

Immunotherapy has been recognized as one of the most promising treatment strategies for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). As a pioneering trend of immunotherapy, dendritic cell (DC) vaccines have displayed the ability to prime an immune response, while the insufficient immunogenicity and low lymph node (LN) targeting efficiency, resulted in an unsubstantiated therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials. Herein, a hybrid nanovaccine (Hy-M-Exo) is developed via fusing tumor-derived exosome (TEX) and dendritic cell membrane vesicle (DCMV). The hybrid nanovaccine inherited the key protein for lymphatic homing, CCR7, from DCMV and demonstrated an enhanced efficiency of LN targeting. Meanwhile, the reserved tumor antigens and endogenous danger signals in the hybrid nanovaccine activated antigen presenting cells (APCs) elicited a robust T-cell response. Moreover, the nanovaccine Hy-M-Exo displayed good therapeutic efficacy in a mouse model of HNSCC. These results indicated that Hy-M-Exo is of high clinical value to serve as a feasible strategy for antitumor immunotherapy.