Issue 13, 2021

Inorganic material based macrophage regulation for cancer therapy: basic concepts and recent advances

Abstract

Macrophages with the M1 phenotype are a type of immune cell with exciting prospects for cancer therapy; however, when these macrophages infiltrate into tumours, many of them are induced by the tumour microenvironment to transform into the M2 type, which can enable tumour defence against external therapeutic strategies, assisting in tumour development. Macrophages have strong plasticity and functional heterogeneity, and their phenotypic transformation is complex and still poorly understood in relation to cancer therapy. Recent material advances in inorganic nanomaterials, especially inorganic elements in vivo, have accelerated the development of macrophage regulation-based cancer treatments. This review summarizes the basics of recent research on macrophage phenotype transformation and discusses the current challenges in macrophage type regulation. Then, the current achievements involving inorganic material-based macrophage regulation and the related anticancer effects of induced macrophages and their extracellular secretions are reviewed systematically. Importantly, inorganic nanomaterial-based macrophage phenotype regulation is flexible and can be adapted for different types of cancer therapies, presenting a possible novel approach for the generation of immune materials for cancer therapy.

Graphical abstract: Inorganic material based macrophage regulation for cancer therapy: basic concepts and recent advances

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
01 Apr 2021
Accepted
20 May 2021
First published
21 May 2021

Biomater. Sci., 2021,9, 4568-4590

Inorganic material based macrophage regulation for cancer therapy: basic concepts and recent advances

R. Zhao, J. Cao, X. Yang, Q. Zhang, M. Z. Iqbal, J. Lu and X. Kong, Biomater. Sci., 2021, 9, 4568 DOI: 10.1039/D1BM00508A

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