Gas Therapies Show Promise for Cancer Immunotherapy Treatment
- Authors
- Van-Anh Thi Nguyen, Chieh-Cheng Huang, Yunching Chen
- Journal
- Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews
- Year
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.addr.2025.115746
- Study Type
- clinical
- Peer Reviewed
- Yes
- Country
- Taiwan
- Health Condition
- Cancer
- Body System
- Immune System
TL;DR
Scientists discovered that tiny gas molecules like nitric oxide and carbon monoxide can help the body's immune system fight cancer better by making tumors easier to attack and weakening the cancer's defense shields. The tricky part is that these gases disappear quickly in the body, so researchers invented special delivery systems (like tiny particles and gels) that can release these healing gases directly into tumors, making the treatment safer and more effective.
Key Finding
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Summary
Scientists conducted a comprehensive review of gas-based cancer therapies, examining how therapeutic gases like hydrogen sulfide, nitric oxide, and carbon monoxide can enhance immunotherapy treatments. These gases penetrate tumors effectively and modulate immune pathways, helping overcome oxygen deficiency and immune evasion. However, clinical challenges include short effectiveness periods and potential toxicity. Researchers highlighted advanced delivery systems including nanocarriers, injectable gels, and responsive release systems that enable targeted, controlled gas delivery to tumors. These engineered approaches maximize anti-cancer benefits while minimizing side effects, showing significant potential for improving cancer treatment outcomes through precision gas immunotherapy.
Abstract
Gas-based therapeutics are emerging as a promising strategy in cancer immunotherapy. Small gaseous signaling molecules such as nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and oxygen (O2) efficiently penetrate tumor tissues and modulate diverse immune pathways. These therapeutic gases can relieve tumor hypoxia, enhance immune cell infiltration, induce immunogenic cancer cell death, and suppress immunosuppressive signaling within the tumor microenvironment (TME). Therefore, they potentiate immune checkpoint blockade and other immunotherapies while overcoming key barriers to immune evasion. Despite this promise, the clinical translation of gas-based therapies faces significant challenges, including short half-lives, systemic toxicity, and lack of spatiotemporal control. To address these limitations, a variety of delivery platforms have been developed-from nanocarriers and injectable hydrogels to inhalable and oral prodrug formulations and stimuli-responsive systems-that enable safe, tumor-targeted, and controlled release of therapeutic gases. Such engineered strategies maximize antitumor efficacy while minimizing off-target effects. This review highlights the immunomodulatory roles of therapeutic gases, examines state-of-the-art delivery technologies, and discusses how these advances lay the foundation for precision gas immunotherapy to unlock the clinical potential of gaseous immunomodulators in cancer treatment.