Near infrared fluorescent peptide nanoparticles for enhancing esophageal cancer therapeutic efficacy.
Zhen FanYan ChangChaochu CuiLeming SunDavid H WangZui PanMingjun ZhangPublished in: Nature communications (2018)
Various types of nanoparticles have been proposed for targeted drug delivering, imaging, and tracking of therapeutic agents. However, highly biocompatible nanoparticles with structure-induced fluorescence and capability to conjugate with biomarkers and drugs remain lacking. This research proposes and synthesizes fluorescent nanoparticles (f-PNPs) assembled by cyclic peptides to combine imaging and drug delivering for esophageal cancer (EC). To achieve tumor targeting, f-PNPs are first conjugated with RGD moieties to selectively target EC cells via αvβ3 integrin; the nanoparticles are then embedded with epirubicin (EPI). Cell viability assays and analysis of tissue histology reveal that EPI-loaded RGD-f-PNPs (RGD-f-PNPs/EPI) led to significantly reduced cardiotoxicity and improved anti-tumor activity compared to EPI alone. Moreover, the drug delivery to tumor sites and therapeutic responses could be monitored with near-infrared fluorescence using RGD-f-PNPs/EPI. This unique nanoparticle system may lead to potential approaches for bioorganic fluorescence-based delivering, imaging, and drug release tracking.
Keyphrases
- drug delivery
- drug release
- cancer therapy
- high resolution
- single molecule
- induced apoptosis
- walled carbon nanotubes
- drug induced
- quantum dots
- emergency department
- genome wide
- high throughput
- fluorescence imaging
- mass spectrometry
- amino acid
- cell cycle arrest
- adverse drug
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- human health
- cell death
- stress induced
- fluorescent probe