The Combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy using glycated chitosan as an immunological stimulant

Immunotherapy has been reported to effectively treat various cancers. In addition, scientists are dedicated in finding whether the combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy can efficiently suppress cancer progression and recurrence. Although radiotherapy has been widely used for breast cancer, better strategies to overcome the latestage breast cancer remains explored. The glycated chitosan (GC), a novel immunological stimulant, was demonstrated to trigger local immune response facilitating the enhancement of radiosensitivity. Our previous study also revealed that the cell mortality and invasive ability were decreased under GC treatment, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we used 4T1-3R-L, a derived murine breast cancer cell line from the spontaneous metastasized liver lesion. We combined ionizing radiation with GC to treat 4T1-3R-L and found the expression of DNA damage-related genes such as gamma-H2AX was more than radiation alone In addition, the cell cycle distribution and colony forming assay showed an increased sub-G1 population and decreased cell survival rate after IR combined GC treatment. Taken together, we sought to elucidate the underlying mechanism by the investigation of DNA damage repair process when IR combined with GC, and to explore another advantage of GC to aid other cancer treatments. Based on our most updated results, the GC treatment is able to effectively increase the radiosensitivity through an immune-responsive signaling transduction, indicating that GC could be a valuable therapeutic strategy for treating against advanced breast cancers.