Profs. Yiran Zheng and Zhiyuan Zhong published a perspective “roadmap to next generation cancer vaccines” in Journal of Controlled Release

Cancer vaccines have emerged as a powerful and clinically viable therapeutic modality to reduce tumor burden, eradicate residual cancer cells and prevent relapse.The past years have witnessed rapid advances in various scientific and engineering approaches tonext-generation cancer vaccines. This perspective highlights the cutting-edge technologies to elicitrobust, durable and cancer-specific immune responses as well as interesting research directions in augmenting the therapeutic efficacies and reducing the systemic side effects of cancer vaccines. The featured technologies include (i) bottom-up high-throughput screening strategies to identify neoantigens as well as optimal delivery systems for tumor antigens and/or adjuvant; (ii) top-down knowledge-based strategies to de novo design effective delivery platforms and to engineer tissue-targeting specificity; and (iii) synergizing cancer vaccines with the clinical immunotherapeutic practices such as CAR-T and anti-PD-1 therapies. The perspective, titled as “Roadmap to Next Generation Cancer Vaccines”, was published as cover article inJournal of Controlled Release2022, 347:308-313 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jconrel.2022.05.005). Profs. Yiran Zheng and Zhiyuan Zhong are the corresponding authors.

Yiran Zhengis professor in College of Pharmaceutical Sciences.His research focuses on immune system engineeringvia biotechnology and materials sciences to create new cancer immunotherapies and vaccines. The technologies have been published in journals such asNat Biotechnol,ACS Nano,J Control ReleaseandAdv Healthc Mater. and patented in multiple countries. Productdeveloped based on the relevant technologies is undergoing a Phase I clinical trial for solid tumor in USA.

Zhiyuan Zhongis Dean of College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Associate Editor ofJournal of Controlled Release(IF 11.467), fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and Highly-Cited Researcher in Pharmacology/Toxicology by Clarivate Analytics. His main research interests lie in controlled drug release, nanomedicines for targeted tumor therapy and cancer immunotherapy. He has published over 300 articles with more than 22000 citations (H-index 77).