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RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Living hybrid material based on probiotic with photothermal properties inhibits PD-L1 expression after tumouricidal photothermal therapy

Ning Jiang1 ,  Mingyan Jiang2 ,  Jianshu Chen1 ,  Ali Mohsin1 ,  Yuqing Mu3 ,  Xiaoping Yi1 ,  Yingping Zhuang1 ,  Jiangchao Qian1 ,  Jiaofang Huang1,2*
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1 State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
2 College of Life Sciences, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China
3 Institute for biomedicine and glycomics, Griffith University School of Medicine and Dentistry, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
BMT 2025 , 6(1), 73–84; https://doi.org/10.12336/biomatertransl.2025.01.006
Submitted: 30 October 2024 | Revised: 22 November 2024 | Accepted: 25 February 2025 | Published: 25 March 2025
Copyright © 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 License.
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Abstract

Photothermal therapy is a safe and effective tumour treatment strategy due to its excellent spatiotemporal controllability. However, interferon gamma in the tumour microenvironment is upregulated after photothermal therapy, which enhances the expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in tumour cells. This further promotes immunosuppression and tumour metastasis, resulting in a poor prognosis in cancer therapy. Traditional nanodrugs often face challenges in penetrating the dense extracellular matrix of solid tumours, whereas certain probiotics possess the ability to specifically colonise the core regions of tumours. In this research, we used Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (ECN) as a chassis cell and self-assembly polydopamine (PDA) on the ECN surface. The black PDA@ECN (notes as PE) actively colonises at the tumour site and produces a photothermal effect under 808 nm laser irradiation to kill tumour cells. To overcome the high expression of PD-L1 induced after photothermal therapy, metformin (MET) was also encapsulated in PE to form PDA@MET@ECN (notes as PME). In vivo experiments demonstrated that PME effectively inhibited the PD-L1 expression and growth of CT26 tumour cells. Overall, PME reverses the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment and enhances the effect of photothermal/immune therapy in tumour treatment.

Keywords
biomaterials
Escherichia coli Nissle 1917
programmed cell death ligand 1
photothermal therapy
Funding
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFA0908900), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 22ZR1416000), and the Open Funding Project of State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism (No. MMLKF24-01).
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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