Efficacy of SPG-ODN 1826 nanovehicles in inducing M1 phenotype through TLR-9 activation in murine alveolar J774A.1 cells: Plausible nano-immunotherapy for lung carcinoma

Alveolar macrophages are the first line of defense against intruding pathogens and play a critical role in cancer immunology. The Toll-like receptor (TLR) family mediates an important role in recognizing and mounting an immune response against intruding microbes. TLR-9 is a member of the intracellular TLR family, which recognizes unmethylated CG motifs from the prokaryotic genome. Upon its activation, TLR-9 triggers downstream of the MyD-88-dependent transcriptional activation of NF-κB, and subsequently results in abundant inflammatory cytokines expression that induces a profound inflammatory milieu. The present exploratory investigation aimed at elucidat-ing the potency of schizophyllan for entrapping ODN 1826 (SPG-ODN 1826)-mediated stimulation of TLR-9 in provoking an inflammatory-type response in murine alveolar macrophages. Schizo-phyllan (SPG), a representative of the β-glucan family, was used in the present study as a nanovehi-cle for endosomal trafficking of CpG ODN 1826. TEM analysis of SPG-ODN 1826 nanovehicles re-vealed that the prepared nanovehicles are spherical and have an average size of about 100 nm. In-terestingly, SPG-ODN 1826 nanovehicles were competent in delivering their therapeutic payload within endosomes of murine alveolar macrophage (J774A.1) cells. Exposure of these nanovehicles within LPS stimulated J774A.1, resulted in a significant provocation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) (p < 0.01) in comparison to CpG ODN 1826 alone. Moreover, the formulated nanovehicles succeeded in generating a profound Th1-based cytokine profile constituted by enhanced expression of IFN-γ (p < 0.001) and IL-1β (p < 0.001) inflammatory cytokines. These findings clearly indicated the immunostimulatory potential of SPG-ODN 1826 nanovehicles for inducing the Th1-type phe-notype, which would certainly assist in skewing M2 phenotype into the much-desired M1 type dur-ing lung cancer.