Paclitaxel/Chitosan Nanosupensions Provide Enhanced Intravesical Bladder Cancer Therapy with Sustained and Prolonged Delivery of Paclitaxel.

Bladder cancer (BC) is a very common cancer. Nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) is the most common type of bladder cancer. After postoperative tumor resection, chemotherapy intravesical instillation is recommended as a standard treatment to significantly reduce recurrences. Nanomedicine-mediated delivery of a chemotherapeutic agent targeting cancer could provide a solution to obtain longer residence time and high bioavailability of an anticancer drug. The approach described here provides a nanomedicine with sustained and prolonged delivery of paclitaxel and enhanced therapy of intravesical bladder cancer, which is paclitaxel/chitosan (PTX/CS) nanosupensions (NSs). The positively charged PTX/CS NSs exhibited a rod-shaped morphology with a mean diameter about 200 nm. They have good dispersivity in water without any protective agents, and the positively charged properties make them easy to be adsorbed on the inner mucosa of the bladder through electrostatic adsorption. PTX/CS NSs also had a high drug loading capacity and can maintain sustained release of paclitaxel which could be prolonged over 10 days. Cell experiments in vitro demonstrated that PTX/CS NSs had good biocompatibility and effective bladder cancer cell proliferation inhibition. The significant anticancer efficacy against intravesical bladder cancer was verified by an in situ bladder cancer model. The paclitaxel/chitosan nanosupensions could provide sustained delivery of chemotherapeutic agents with significant anticancer efficacy against intravesical bladder cancer.