Semiconducting Polymers for Cancer Immunotherapy.

As a monumental breakthrough in cancer treatment, immunotherapy has attracted tremendous attention in recent years. However, one challenge faced by immunotherapy is the low response rate and the irAEs. Therefore, it is important to explore new therapeutic strategies and platforms for boosting therapeutic benefits and decreasing the side effects of immunotherapy. In recent years, semiconducting polymer (SP), a category of organic materials with π-conjugated aromatic backbone, has been attracting considerable attention because of their outstanding characteristics such as excellent photophysical features, good biosafety, adjustable chemical flexibility, easy fabrication, and high stability. With these distinct advantages, SP has been extensively explored for bioimaging and photo- or ultrasound-activated tumor therapy. In this review, we summarize the recent advancements in SP-based nanomedicines for enhanced tumor immunotherapy. According to the photophysical properties of SPs, this review highlights the cancer immunotherapies enabled by SPs with the photothermal, photodynamic, or sonodynamic functions in detail, with a particular focus on the construction of combination immunotherapy and activatable nanoplatforms to maximize the benefits of cancer immunotherapy. This review will provide new guidance and comprehensive insights for the design of SPs with desired photophysical properties to realize maximized effectiveness of required biomedical applications. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.