Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains the most frequently diagnosed lung cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. PD-1/PD-L1 axis inhibitors have changed the treatment paradigm for various cancer types, including NSCLC. However, success of these inhibitors in lung cancer clinic is severely limited by their inability to inhibit the PD-1/PD-L1 signaling axis due to heavy glycosylation and heterogeneity expression of PD-L1 in NSCLC tumor tissue. Taking advantage of the facts that tumor cell derived nanovesicles could efficiently accumulate in the homotypic tumor sites due to their innate targeting abilities and that specific and high affinity existed between PD-1 and PD-L1, we developed NSCLC targeting biomimetic nanovesicles (NV) cargos from genetically engineered NSCLC cell lines that overexpressed PD-1 (P-NV). We showed that P-NVs efficiently bound NSCLC cells in vitro and targeted tumor nodules in vivo. We further loaded P-NVs with 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) and doxorubicin (DOX), and found that these drugs co-loaded P-NVs efficiently shrank lung cancers in mouse models for both allograft and autochthonous tumor. Mechanistically, drug-loaded P-NVs efficiently caused cytotoxicity to tumor cells and simultaneously activated anti-tumor immunity function of tumor-infiltrating T cells. Our data therefore strongly argue that 2-DG and DOX co-loaded, PD-1-displaying nanovesicles is a highly promising therapy for treatment of NSCLC in clinic.

Statement of significance

Lung cancer cells overexpressing PD-1 are developed for preparing nanoparticles (P-NV). PD-1s displayed on NVs enhance their homologous targeting abilities to tumor cells expressing PD-L1s. Chemotherapeutics such as DOX and 2-DG, are packaged in such nanovesicles (PDG-NV). These nanovesicles efficiently delivered chemotherapeutics to tumor nodules specifically. The synergy between DOX and 2-DG is observed in inhibiting lung cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, 2-DG causes deglycosylation and downregulation of PD-L1 on tumor cells while PD-1 displayed on nanovesicles’ membrane blocks PD-L1 on tumor cells. 2-DG loaded nanoparticles thus activate anti-tumor activities of T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Our work thus highlights the promising antitumor activity of PDG-NVs, which warrants further clinical evaluation.