Cancer vaccines are a promising approach to boosting the body’s immune system to fight cancer, with many types of vaccines currently in development, including DNA, mRNA, peptide, and viral vector vaccines. All of these therapies stand to benefit significantly from intradermal (ID) administration, which offers several advantages for enhancing the immune response.
Cancer vaccines are designed to direct the immune system against tumour cells, requiring a stronger and more specific immune response than traditional prophylactic vaccines. By leveraging the high density of APCs in the skin and improving immune cell trafficking to the lymph nodes, intradermal delivery with an intradermal delivery device fine-tunes the immune response, enabling stronger and more specific (eg., cellular immunity) immune responses.
Whether it’s a DNA, mRNA, peptide, or viral vector vaccine, intradermal administration provides the optimal environment for maximizing the therapeutic potential of these vaccines.
Checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer therapy. Despite a clear clinical benefit, these drugs are expensive, lead to significant adverse events and demonstrate de novo or acquired resistance.
Intradermal delivery of checkpoint inhibitors may overcome these limitations, enabling improved anti-tumour activity, dose-sparing, and reducing systemic adverse events (Van Pul 2021; Van Pul 2022).
Emerging evidence suggests that checkpoint inhibitors have a therapeutic benefit from acting in the lymph nodes (Tanaka, 2023). Despite this benefit, however, current delivery methods (IV/SQ) result in minimal lymphatic engagement and may, therefore, limit the full therapeutic benefit of these drugs.
Due to the vast network of lymphatic vessels in the dermis, ID delivery of CPIs can lead to improved lymphatic targeting, which has demonstrated improved anti-tumour activity in pre-clinical models. Furthermore, local ID delivery may reduce the desired dose and the advent of systemic adverse events, enabling treatment across larger populations, including in earlier disease states.
