Peptides as Versatile Regulators in Cancer Immunotherapy: Recent Advances, Challenges, and Future Prospects

作者：Yu Lei, Jiacheng Liu, Yaowei Bai, Chuansheng Zheng, Dongyuan Wang · 发表于：Pharmaceutics · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3390/pharmaceutics17010046 · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Immunotherapy and Immune Responses、RNA Interference and Gene Delivery、Nanoplatforms for cancer theranostics

The emergence of effective immunotherapies has revolutionized therapies for many types of cancer. However, current immunotherapy has limited efficacy in certain patient populations and displays therapeutic resistance after a period of treatment. To address these challenges, a growing number of immunotherapy drugs have been investigated in clinical and preclinical applications. The diverse functionality of peptides has made them attractive as a therapeutic modality, and the global market for peptide-based therapeutics is witnessing significant growth. Peptides can act as immunotherapeutic agents for the treatment of many malignant cancers. However, a systematic understanding of the interactions between different peptides and the host's immune system remains unclear. This review describes in detail the roles of peptides in regulating the function of the immune system for cancer immunotherapy. Initially, we systematically elaborate on the relevant mechanisms of cancer immunotherapy. Subsequently, we categorize peptide-based nanomaterials into the following three categories: peptide-based vaccines, anti-cancer peptides, and peptide-based delivery systems. We carefully analyzed the roles of these peptides in overcoming the current barriers in immunotherapy, including multiple strategies to enhance the immunogenicity of peptide vaccines, the synergistic effect of anti-cancer peptides in combination with other immune agents, and peptide assemblies functioning as immune stimulators o...