Tumor Targeting Chemo- and Photodynamic Therapy Packaged in Albumin for Enhanced Anti-Tumor Efficacy

Research progress of sorafenib drug delivery system in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma: An update

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most prevalent malignant tumors in the contemporary era, representing a significant global health concern. Early HCC patients have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic, which promotes the onset and progression of the disease. Moreover, advanced HCC is insensitive to chemotherapy, making traditional clinical treatment unable to block cancer development. Sorafenib (SFB) is a first-line targeted drug for advanced HCC patients with anti-angiogenesis and anti-tumor cell proliferation effects. However, the efficacy of SFB is constrained by its off-target distribution, rapid metabolism, and multi-drug resistance. In recent years, nanoparticles based on a variety of materials have been demonstrated to enhance the targeting and therapeutic efficacy of SFB against HCC. Concurrently, the advent of joint drug delivery systems has furnished crucial empirical evidence for reversing SFB resistance. This review will summarize the application of nanotechnology in the field of HCC treatment over the past five years. It will focus on the research progress of SFB delivery systems combined with multiple therapeutic modalities in HCC treatment.

"Abraxane-Like" Radiosensitizer for In Situ Oral Cancer Therapy

Radiotherapy plays a vital role in cancer therapy. However, the hypoxic microenvironment of tumors greatly limits the effectiveness, thus it is crucial to develop a simple, efficient, and safe radiosensitizer to reverse hypoxia and ameliorate the efficacy of radiotherapy. Inspired by the structure of canonical nanodrug Abraxane, herein, a native HSA-modified CaO2 nanoparticle system (CaO2-HSA) prepared by biomineralization-induced self-assembly is developed. CaO2-HSA will accumulate in tumor tissue and decompose to produce oxygen, altering the hypoxic condition inside the tumor. Simultaneously, ROS and calcium ions will lead to calcium overload and further trigger immunogenic cell death. Notably, its sensitizing enhancement ratio (SER = 3.47) is much higher than that of sodium glycididazole used in the clinic. Furthermore, in animal models of in situ oral cancer, CaO2-HSA can effectively inhibit tumor growth. With its high efficacy, facile preparation, and heavy-metal free biosafety, the CaO2-HSA-based radiosensitizer holds enormous potential for oral cancer therapy.

Heparosan-based self-assembled nanocarrier for zinc(II) phthalocyanine for use in photodynamic cancer therapy

Zinc(II) phthalocyanine (ZnPc) is a promising photosensitizer in photodynamic therapy (PDT) for melanoma treatment. However, the poor solubility of ZnPc limits its application. To overcome this limitation, heparosan (HP)-based nanoparticles were prepared by anchoring the l-lysine-linked α-linolenic acid branch to the carboxylic acid group to produce amphiphilic conjugates named heparosan with an l-lysine-linked α-linolenic acid branch (HLA). HLA conjugates could self-assemble into spherical nanoparticles in aqueous media and encapsulate ZnPc to form HLA-ZnPc nanoparticles. The cellular uptake of ZnPc could be improved by HLA carriers. These nanoparticles presented excellent photodynamic-mediated toxicity against mouse melanoma cells (B16) by markedly upregulating the intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels while showing no cytotoxicity to either B16 or normal cells (L02 and HK-2 cells) in the dark. Furthermore, HLA-ZnPc displayed excellent stability in both powder and Roswell Park Memorial Institute (RPMI) 1640 medium, indicating its promise for application in drug delivery and PDT. These results revealed a strategy for HP-based enhancement of ZnPc in PDT efficacy.

Light-triggered photodynamic nanomedicines for overcoming localized therapeutic efficacy in cancer treatment

Photodynamic nanomedicines have significantly enhanced the therapeutic efficacy of photosensitizers (PSs) by overcoming critical limitations of PSs such as poor water solubility and low tumor accumulation. Furthermore, functional photodynamic nanomedicines have enabled overcoming oxygen depletion during photodynamic therapy (PDT) and tissue light penetration limitation by supplying oxygen or upconverting light in targeted tumor tissues, resulting in providing the potential to overcome biological therapeutic barriers of PDT. Nevertheless, their localized therapeutic effects still remain a huddle for the effective treatment of metastatic- or recurrent tumors. Recently, newly designed photodynamic nanomedicines and their combination chemo- or immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy enable the systemic treatment of various metastatic tumors by eliciting antitumor immune responses via immunogenic cell death (ICD). This review introduces recent advances in photodynamic nanomedicines and their applications, focusing on overcoming current limitations. Finally, the challenges and future perspectives of the clinical translation of photodynamic nanomedicines in cancer PDT are discussed.

In-Vitro Co-delivery of Decarbazine and Photosense using Poly lactic-co-glycolic acid nanocarrier for combinational therapy

PLGA (Poly lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles are in new trend for drug delivery due to their good biodegradability properties. In this study, we have synthesized the PLGA nanoparticles by solvent evaporation method and loaded the decarbazine (DTIC, 5-3,3-(dimethyl-ltriazeno)imidazole-4-carboxamide) and photosense (AlPc4) drug alone as well as combined with two different concentrations i-e 25 nM and 250 nM. No cytotoxicity (viability ∼ 100 %) was observed for different treatment arms either alone or in co-delivery of nano-formulation for Rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cell culture which showed the biocompatibility of carrier. On comparison, the Photodynamic therapy (PDT) alone showed more significant cell death then the combinational therapy (PDT + chemotherapy) at 2 joule /cm² and 5 joule /cm². Lower doses co-delivery showed light dose dependent toxicity to culture i.e., 0 % death @ 2 joule /cm², ∼ 40 % death @ 5 joule /cm². Gene expressions of four apoptosis related genes (CASP3, CASP9, PARP1 and P53) were quantified by RT-PCR which shows down regulation for all the treatment arms indicating the absence of apoptosis for the cell death during PDT and combinational therapy. It was concluded that apoptosis related genes were down-regulated and morphological changes i.e., swelling and disruption suggest that the mode of cell death was necrosis.

Novel pH-Triggered Doxorubicin-Releasing Nanoparticles Self-Assembled by Functionalized β-Cyclodextrin and Amphiphilic Phthalocyanine for Anticancer Therapy

Cyclodextrins (CDs), as pharmaceutical excipients with excellent biocompatibility, non-immunogenicity, and low toxicity in vivo, are widely used to carry drugs by forming inclusion complexes for improving the solubility and stability of drugs. However, the limited space of CDs' lipophilic central cavity affects the loading of many drugs, especially with larger molecules. In this study, β-CDs were modified by acetonization to improve the affinity for the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin (DOX), and doxorubicin-adsorbing acetalated β-CDs (Ac-CD:DOX) self-assembled to nanoparticles, followed by coating with the amphiphilic zinc phthalocyanine photosensitizer ZnPc-(PEG)₅ for antitumor therapy. The final product ZnPc-(PEG)₅:Ac-CD:DOX was demonstrated to have excellent stability and pH-sensitive drug release characteristics. The cell viability and apoptosis assay showed synergistic cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy and phototherapy. The mechanism of cytotoxicity was analyzed in terms of intracellular reactive oxygen species, mitochondrial membrane potential, and subcellular localization. More importantly, in vivo experiments indicated that ZnPc-(PEG)₅:Ac-CD:DOX possessed significant tumor targeting, prominent antitumor activity, and less side effects. Our strategy expands the application of CDs as drug carriers and provides new insights into the development of CD chemistry.

Self-assembled Camptothecin derivatives - Curcuminoids conjugate for combinatorial chemo-photodynamic therapy to enhance anti-tumor efficacy

Camptothecin (CPT), an alkaloid, was first discovered from plants and has potent anti-tumor activity. Since then, CPT analogs (namely Irinotecan and Topotecan) have been approved by the FDA for cancer treatments. Curcumin, on the other hand, is a widely used photosensitizer in photodynamic therapy (PDT) treatment. In our previous work, we have reported a straightforward strategy to construct a drug self-delivery system in which two-molecular species Irinotecan and Curcumin can self-assembly into a complex of ion pairs, namely ICN, through intermolecular non-covalent interactions. We found that ICN has slightly better chemotherapy efficacy than its individual components with much fewer side effects. In this paper, we aim to combine the chemotherapy and the PDT of ICN to further improve its anti-tumor performance. The efficient cellular uptake of ICNs was observed by confocal microscopy. Dichloro-dihydro-fluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) assay was used to detect the generation of singlet oxygen species. We found that the cell viability was 9% with both chemotherapy and PDT, and 31% with chemotherapy alone for the case with an ICN concentration of 10 μM, which demonstrated that the anti-tumor efficacy against the HT-29 cancer cell line was enhanced substantially with the combination therapy strategy. The study with an in vivo mouse model has further verified that the chemo-PDT dual therapy can inhibit tumor growth by 84% and 18.8% comparing with the control group and the chemotherapy group, respectively. Our results demonstrated that the new strategy using self-assembly and carrier-free nanoparticles with their chemo-PDT dual therapy may provide new opportunities to develop future combinatorial therapy methods in treating cancer.

An in vitro study of the effect of 5-ALA-mediated photodynamic therapy on oral squamous cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND

The primary aim of this study was to observe the effect of 5-ALA-mediated photodynamic therapy on oral squamous cell carcinoma in vitro.

METHODS

SCC25 cells were divided into the observation group and the blank control group. Different concentrations of 5-ALA and SCC25 cells were co-incubated for different times, and the concentration of protoporphyrin IX was detected by flow cytometry. SCC25 cells were divided into the 5-ALA group (100 mg/L), the laser irradiation group alone, the 5-ALA plus laser irradiation group, and the blank control group (0 mg/L 5-ALA), and the methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) solution method was used (each group was incubated for 4, 8 and 12 h in turn). The cell survival rate was calculated. Using annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide method, the apoptosis of SCC25 cells was detected by flow cytometry.

RESULTS

The level of protoporphyrin IX in SCC25 cells increased with increased concentrations of 5-ALA and length of incubation. However, after 12 h, protoporphyrin IX level in SCC25 cells was gradually stabilized, and similar effect was obtained with 100 mg/L or more 5-ALA, indicating that the level of protoporphyrin IX in SCC25 cells was determined by 5-ALA concentration and incubation time. 5-ALA plus laser irradiation exerted an inhibitory effect on the growth of SCC25 cells, which was highly associated with drug dose and incubation time. Compared with the control group, laser irradiation alone or 5-ALA alone had no effect on the apoptosis of SCC25 cells. Different concentrations of 5-ALA combined with laser irradiation showed a remarkable effect of apoptosis, and a higher apoptosis rate was seen with higher drug concentrations.

CONCLUSION

5-ALA-mediated photodynamic therapy affects the growth of SCC25 cells in vitro, which may provide a new idea for the clinical treatment of oral squamous cell carcinoma.