Perlecan-targeted nanoparticles for drug delivery to triple-negative breast cancer

Analytical Techniques for Characterizing Tumor-Targeted Antibody-Functionalized Nanoparticles

The specific interaction between cell surface receptors and corresponding antibodies has driven opportunities for developing targeted cancer therapies using nanoparticle systems. It is challenging to design and develop such targeted nanomedicines using antibody ligands, as the final nanoconjugate's specificity hinges on the cohesive functioning of its components. The multicomponent nature of antibody-conjugated nanoparticles also complicates the characterization process. Regardless of the type of nanoparticle, it is essential to perform physicochemical characterization to establish a solid foundation of knowledge and develop suitable preclinical studies. A meaningful physicochemical evaluation of antibody-conjugated nanoparticles should include determining the quantity and orientation of the antibodies, confirming the antibodies' integrity following attachment, and assessing the immunoreactivity of the obtained nanoconjugates. In this review, the authors describe the various techniques (electrophoresis, spectroscopy, colorimetric assays, immunoassays, etc.) used to analyze the physicochemical properties of nanoparticles functionalized with antibodies and discuss the main results.

Bridging Smart Nanosystems with Clinically Relevant Models and Advanced Imaging for Precision Drug Delivery

Intracellular delivery of nano-drug-carriers (NDC) to specific cells, diseased regions, or solid tumors has entered the era of precision medicine that requires systematic knowledge of nano-biological interactions from multidisciplinary perspectives. To this end, this review first provides an overview of membrane-disruption methods such as electroporation, sonoporation, photoporation, microfluidic delivery, and microinjection with the merits of high-throughput and enhanced efficiency for in vitro NDC delivery. The impact of NDC characteristics including particle size, shape, charge, hydrophobicity, and elasticity on cellular uptake are elaborated and several types of NDC systems aiming for hierarchical targeting and delivery in vivo are reviewed. Emerging in vitro or ex vivo human/animal-derived pathophysiological models are further explored and highly recommended for use in NDC studies since they might mimic in vivo delivery features and fill the translational gaps from animals to humans. The exploration of modern microscopy techniques for precise nanoparticle (NP) tracking at the cellular, organ, and organismal levels informs the tailored development of NDCs for in vivo application and clinical translation. Overall, the review integrates the latest insights into smart nanosystem engineering, physiological models, imaging-based validation tools, all directed towards enhancing the precise and efficient intracellular delivery of NDCs.

Immunohistochemical Evaluation of Perlecan (Heparan Sulphate Proteoglycan 2) Expression in Invasive Female Breast Carcinoma

BACKGROUND

Breast cancer (BC) is the commonest type of female cancer worldwide and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Perlecan expression increases in aggressive breast cancers, pointing to a possible significance of this novel target therapy. Consequently, the current research investigates the immunohistochemical expression of Perlecan by tumor cells in female breast cancer and the correlation of such expression with the pathologic parameters of the tumors.

METHODS

A retrospective cross-sectional investigation was carried out. Seventy-four formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded breast carcinoma tissue samples from patients undergoing modified radical mastectomy (MRM) or conservative breast surgery (CBS) were collected from the pathology department at Kasr El Aini Hospital. The paraffin blocks were sectioned and immunostained with Perlecan, and their expression was investigated in tumor cells and evaluated according to the H-score and classified into low and high expression. The expression was statistically correlated with the clinicopathological parameters of the cases.

RESULTS

Perlecan expression was low in 41 cases (55.4%) and high in 33 cases (44.6%). It showed a statistically insignificant correlation with all studied parameters, but increased Perlecan expression was directly associated with poor tumor prognostic factors including higher tumor grade, advanced T stage, N3 stage, advanced anatomic stage, high Ki-67 index, positive lymphovascular invasion and perineural invasion, luminal B molecular subtype, and HER2 over-expression.

CONCLUSION

Perlecan expression measured by immunohistochemical staining is associated with aggressive characteristics in breast cancer, suggesting that Perlecan may help in cancer progression and can be investigated as a possible target therapy.

Current perspectives and trend of nanomedicine in cancer: A review and bibliometric analysis

The limitations of traditional cancer treatments are driving the creation and development of new nanomedicines. At present, with the rapid increase of research on nanomedicine in the field of cancer, there is a lack of intuitive analysis of the development trend, main authors and research hotspots of nanomedicine in the field of cancer, as well as detailed elaboration of possible research hotspots. In this review, data collected from the Web of Science Core Collection database between January 1st, 2000, and December 31st, 2021, were subjected to a bibliometric analysis. The co-authorship, co-citation, and co-occurrence of countries, institutions, authors, literature, and keywords in this subject were examined using VOSviewer, Citespace, and a well-known online bibliometrics platform. We collected 19,654 published papers, China produced the most publications (36.654%, 7204), followed by the United States (29.594%, 5777), and India (7.780%, 1529). An interesting fact is that, despite China having more publications than the United States, the United States still dominates this field, having the highest H-index and the most citations. Acs Nano, Nano Letters, and Biomaterials are the top three academic publications that publish articles on nanomedicine for cancer out of a total of 7580 academic journals. The most significant increases were shown for the keywords "cancer nanomedicine", "tumor microenvironment", "nanoparticles", "prodrug", "targeted nanomedicine", "combination", and "cancer immunotherapy" indicating the promising area of research. Meanwhile, the development prospects and challenges of nanomedicine in cancer are also discussed and provided some solutions to the major obstacles.

Fabrication of Polymersomes: A Macromolecular Architecture in Nanotherapeutics

In consideration of the issues of drug delivery systems, the artificial vesicle structures composed of block copolymers called polymersomes recently gained considerable attention. The possibility of tuning the mechanical parameter and increasing the scale-up production of polymersomes led to its wide application in healthcare. Bearing in mind the disease condition, the structure and properties of the polymersomes could be tuned to serve the purpose. Furthermore, specific ligands can be incorporated on the vesicular surface to induce smart polymersomes, thus improving targeted delivery. The synthesis method and surface functionalization are the two key aspects that determine the versatility of biological applications as they account for stability, specific targeting, degradability, biocompatibility, and bioavailability. A perfectly aligned polymer vesicle can mimic the cells/organelles and function by avoiding cytotoxicity. This supramolecular structure can carry and deliver payloads of a wide range, including drugs, proteins, and genes, contributing to the construction of next-generation therapeutics. These aspects promote the potential use of such components as a framework to approach damaged tissue while maintaining healthy environments during circulation. Herein, this article concentrates specifically on the drug delivery applications of polymersomes.

Nanotechnological Approaches for the Treatment of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: A Comprehensive Review

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women around the world, having a sudden spread nowadays because of the poor sedentary lifestyle of people. Comprising several subtypes, one of the most dangerous and aggressive ones is triple-negative breast cancer or TNBC. Even though conventional surgical approaches like single and double mastectomy and preventive chemotherapeutic approaches are available, they are not selective to cancer cells and are only for symptomatic treatment. A new branch called nanotechnology has emerged in the last few decades that offers various novel characteristics, such as size in nanometric scale, enhanced adherence to multiple targeting moieties, active and passive targeting, controlled release, and site-specific targeting. Among various nanotherapeutic approaches like dendrimers, lipid-structured nanocarriers, carbon nanotubes, etc., nanoparticle targeted therapeutics can be termed the best among all for their specific cytotoxicity to cancer cells and increased bioavailability to a target site. This review focuses on the types and molecular pathways involving TNBC, existing treatment strategies, various nanotechnological approaches like exosomes, carbon nanotubes, dendrimers, lipid, and carbon-based nanocarriers, and especially various nanoparticles (NPs) like polymeric, photodynamic, peptide conjugated, antibody-conjugated, metallic, inorganic, natural product capped, and CRISPR based nanoparticles already approved for treatment or are under clinical and pre-clinical trials for TNBC.

Effective suppression of triple negative breast cancer by paclitaxel nanoparticles conjugated with transmembrane TNF-α monoclonal antibody

Transmembrane TNF-α (tmTNF), a transmembrane form of TNF-α, was reported overexpressed in approximately 84% of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients and has emerged as a valid candidate biomarker for targeting TNBC. Paclitaxel is a first-line chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, but suffers from low water solubility, resulting in its low bioavailability. To achieve site-specific delivery of the anticancer chemotherapeutic drug (paclitaxel) on TNBC, we developed tmTNF-α monoclonal antibody (mAb)-conjugated paclitaxel (PTX) nanoparticles (NPs) (tmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs) as potential nanocarriers. This targeted delivery-therapy nanocarriers was conducted by using an emulsification-evaporation method. tmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs displayed favorable physicochemical properties. Compared with the control groups, tumor growth in human MDA-MB-231 xenograft mice was suppressed significantly by tmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs. TmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs exerts anti-tumor effects via promoting apoptosis and regulating mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) / protein kinase B (AKT)/ mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) cascade, as well as AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and nuclear factor Kappa-B (NF-κB) pathways. Moreover, tmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs can inhibit the process of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in TNBC to suppress tumor progression and metastasis. Together, the novel tmTNF-α mAb-PTX NPs based targeted drug delivery system is a potentially highly effective approach for treating TNBC.

Antibody-Incorporated Nanomedicines for Cancer Therapy

Antibody-based cancer therapy, one of the most significant therapeutic strategies, has achieved considerable success and progress over the past decades. Nevertheless, obstacles including limited tumor penetration, short circulation half-lives, undesired immunogenicity, and off-target side effects remain to be overcome for the antibody-based cancer treatment. Owing to the rapid development of nanotechnology, antibody-containing nanomedicines that have been extensively explored to overcome these obstacles have already demonstrated enhanced anticancer efficacy and clinical translation potential. This review intends to offer an overview of the advancements of antibody-incorporated nanoparticulate systems in cancer treatment, together with the nontrivial challenges faced by these next-generation nanomedicines. Diverse strategies of antibody immobilization, formats of antibodies, types of cancer-associated antigens, and anticancer mechanisms of antibody-containing nanomedicines are provided and discussed in this review, with an emphasis on the latest applications. The current limitations and future research directions on antibody-containing nanomedicines are also discussed from different perspectives to provide new insights into the construction of anticancer nanomedicines.

‘Breast Cancer Resistance Likelihood and Personalized Treatment Through Integrated Multiomics’

In recent times, enormous progress has been made in improving the diagnosis and therapeutic strategies for breast carcinoma, yet it remains the most prevalent cancer and second highest contributor to cancer-related deaths in women. Breast cancer (BC) affects one in eight females globally. In 2018 alone, 1.4 million cases were identified worldwide in postmenopausal women and 645,000 cases in premenopausal females, and this burden is constantly increasing. This shows that still a lot of efforts are required to discover therapeutic remedies for this disease. One of the major clinical complications associated with the treatment of breast carcinoma is the development of therapeutic resistance. Multidrug resistance (MDR) and consequent relapse on therapy are prevalent issues related to breast carcinoma; it is due to our incomplete understanding of the molecular mechanisms of breast carcinoma disease. Therefore, elucidating the molecular mechanisms involved in drug resistance is critical. For management of breast carcinoma, the treatment decision not only depends on the assessment of prognosis factors but also on the evaluation of pathological and clinical factors. Integrated data assessments of these multiple factors of breast carcinoma through multiomics can provide significant insight and hope for making therapeutic decisions. This omics approach is particularly helpful since it identifies the biomarkers of disease progression and treatment progress by collective characterization and quantification of pools of biological molecules within and among the cancerous cells. The scrupulous understanding of cancer and its treatment at the molecular level led to the concept of a personalized approach, which is one of the most significant advancements in modern oncology. Likewise, there are certain genetic and non-genetic tests available for BC which can help in personalized therapy. Genetically inherited risks can be screened for personal predisposition to BC, and genetic changes or variations (mutations) can also be identified to decide on the best treatment. Ultimately, further understanding of BC at the molecular level (multiomics) will define more precise choices in personalized medicine. In this review, we have summarized therapeutic resistance associated with BC and the techniques used for its management.

Tumor microenvironment and nanotherapeutics: intruding the tumor fort

Over recent years, advancements in nanomedicine have allowed new approaches to diagnose and treat tumors. Nano drug delivery systems exploit the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect and enter the tumor tissue's interstitial space. However, tumor barriers play a crucial role, and cause inefficient EPR or the homing effect. Mounting evidence supports the hypothesis that the components of the tumor microenvironment, such as the extracellular matrix, and cellular and physiological components collectively or cooperatively hinder entry and distribution of drugs, and therefore, limit the theragnostic applications of cancer nanomedicine. This abnormal tumor microenvironment plays a pivotal role in cancer nanomedicine and was recently recognized as a promising target for improving nano-drug delivery and their therapeutic outcomes. Strategies like passive or active targeting, stimuli-triggered nanocarriers, and the modulation of immune components have shown promising results in achieving anticancer efficacy. The present review focuses on the tumor microenvironment and nanoparticle-based strategies (polymeric, inorganic and organic nanoparticles) for intruding the tumor barrier and improving therapeutic effects.

Cancer stem cells and strategies for targeted drug delivery

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small proportion of cancer cells with high tumorigenic activity, self-renewal ability, and multilineage differentiation potential. Standard anti-tumor therapies including conventional chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and molecularly targeted therapies are not effective against CSCs, and often lead to enrichment of CSCs that can result in tumor relapse. Therefore, it is hypothesized that targeting CSCs is key to increasing the efficacy of cancer therapies. In this review, CSC properties including CSC markers, their role in tumor growth, invasiveness, metastasis, and drug resistance, as well as CSC microenvironment are discussed. Further, CSC-targeted strategies including the use of targeted drug delivery systems are examined.

Surface Biomodification of Liposomes and Polymersomes for Efficient Targeted Drug Delivery

Chemotherapy has seen great progress in the development of performant treatment strategies. Nanovesicles such as liposomes and polymersomes demonstrated great potential in cancer therapy. However, these nanocarriers deliver their content passively, which faces a lot of constraints during blood circulation. The main challenge resides in degradation and random delivery to normal tissues. Hence, targeting drug delivery using specific molecules (such as antibodies) grafted over the surface of these nanocarriers came as the answer to overcome many problems faced before. The advantage of using antibodies is their antigen/antibody recognition, which provides a high level of specificity to reach treatment targets. This review discusses the many techniques of nanocarrier functionalization with antibodies. The aim is to recognize the various approaches by describing their advantages and deficiencies to create the most suitable drug delivery platform. Some methods are more suitable for other applications rather than drug delivery, which can explain the low success of some proposed targeted nanocarriers. In here, a critical analysis of how every method could impact the recognition and targeting capacity of some nanocarriers (liposomes and polymersomes) is discussed to make future research more impactful and advance the field of biomedicine further.

Evaluation of nanoparticle drug-delivery systems used in preclinical studies

Multifunctional nanoparticles have been identified as a promising drug-delivery system for sustainable drug release. The structural and size tunability and disease-targeting ability of nanoparticles have made them more suitable for multiple drug loading and delivery, thereby enhancing therapeutic results through synergistic effects. Nanoparticulate carriers with specific features such as target specificity and stimuli-responsiveness enable selective drug delivery with lower potential side effects. In this review we have classified the recently published articles on polymeric and inorganic nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery into three different categories based on functionality and discussed their efficiency for drug delivery and their therapeutic outcomes in preclinical models. Most of the drug-loaded nanodelivery systems discussed have demonstrated negligible or very low systemic toxicity throughout the experimental period in animal models compared with free drug administration. In addition, some challenges associated with the translation of nanoparticle-based drug carrier responses to clinical application are highlighted.

A bird's eye view of the advanced approaches and strategies for overshadowing triple negative breast cancer

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the most aggressive form of breast cancer. It is characterized by the absence of estrogen, progesterone and human epidermal growth factor receptors. The main issue with TNBC is that it exhibits poor prognosis, high risk of relapse, short progression-free survival and low overall survival in patients. This is because the conventional therapy used for managing TNBC has issues pertaining to poor bioavailability, lower cellular uptake, increased off-target effects and development of resistance. To overcome such pitfalls, several other approaches are explored. In this context, the present manuscript showcases three of the most widely used approaches which are (i) nanotechnology-based approach; (ii) gene therapy approach and (iii) Phytochemical-based approach. The ultimate focus is to present and explain the insightful reports based on these approaches. Further, the review also expounds on the identified molecular targets and novel targeting ligands which are explored for managing TNBC effectively. Thus, in a nutshell, the review tries to highlight these existing treatment approaches which might inspire for future development of novel therapies with a potential of overshadowing TNBC.

Nanoparticle Surface Functionalization: How to Improve Biocompatibility and Cellular Internalization

The use of nanoparticles (NP) in diagnosis and treatment of many human diseases, including cancer, is of increasing interest. However, cytotoxic effects of NPs on cells and the uptake efficiency significantly limit their use in clinical practice. The physico-chemical properties of NPs including surface composition, superficial charge, size and shape are considered the key factors that affect the biocompatibility and uptake efficiency of these nanoplatforms. Thanks to the possibility of modifying physico-chemical properties of NPs, it is possible to improve their biocompatibility and uptake efficiency through the functionalization of the NP surface. In this review, we summarize some of the most recent studies in which NP surface modification enhances biocompatibility and uptake. Furthermore, the most used techniques used to assess biocompatibility and uptake are also reported.

An Overview of Antibody Conjugated Polymeric Nanoparticles for Breast Cancer Therapy

Nanoparticles (NPs) are promising drug delivery systems (DDS) for identifying and treating cancer. Active targeting NPs can be generated by conjugation with ligands that bind overexpressed or mutant cell surface receptors on target cells that are poorly or not even expressed on normal cells. Receptor-mediated endocytosis of the NPs occurs and the drug is released inside the cell or in the surrounding tissue due to the bystander effect. Antibodies are the most frequently used ligands to actively target tumor cells. In this context, antibody-based therapies have been extensively used in HER2+ breast cancer. However, some patients inherently display resistance and in advanced stages, almost all eventually progress. Functionalized NPs through conjugation with antibodies appear to be a promising strategy to optimize targeted therapies due to properties related to biocompatibility, suitable delivery control and efficiency of functionalization. This review is focused on the different strategies to conjugate antibodies into polymeric NPs. Recent antibody conjugation approaches applied to the improvement of breast cancer therapy are highlighted in this review.

Polymeric Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery: Recent Developments and Future Prospects

The complexity of some diseases—as well as the inherent toxicity of certain drugs—has led to an increasing interest in the development and optimization of drug-delivery systems. Polymeric nanoparticles stand out as a key tool to improve drug bioavailability or specific delivery at the site of action. The versatility of polymers makes them potentially ideal for fulfilling the requirements of each particular drug-delivery system. In this review, a summary of the state-of-the-art panorama of polymeric nanoparticles as drug-delivery systems has been conducted, focusing mainly on those applications in which the corresponding disease involves an important morbidity, a considerable reduction in the life quality of patients—or even a high mortality. A revision of the use of polymeric nanoparticles for ocular drug delivery, for cancer diagnosis and treatment, as well as nutraceutical delivery, was carried out, and a short discussion about future prospects of these systems is included.

A review of nanotechnology-based approaches for breast cancer and triple-negative breast cancer

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most prevalent cancers in women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in which the three major receptors i.e. estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), are absent is known to express the most aggressive phenotype and increased metastasis which results in the development of resistance to chemotherapy. It offers various therapeutic advantages in treating BC and TNBC. Nanotechnology offers various unique characteristics such as small size (nanometric), active and passive targeting, and the ability to attach multiple targeting moieties, controlled release, and site-specific targeting. This review focuses on conventional drug therapies, recent treatment strategies, and unique therapeutic approaches available for BC and TNBC. The role of breast cancer stem cells in the recurrence of BC and TNBC has also been highlighted. Several chemotherapeutic agents delivered using nanocarriers such as polymeric nanoparticles/micelles, metallic/inorganic NPs, and lipid-based NPs (Liposome, solid-lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs)), etc. with excellent responses in the treatment of BC/TNBC along with breast cancer stem cells have been discussed in details. Moreover, the application of nanomedicine including CRISPR nanoparticle, exosomes for the treatment of BC/TNBC and other molecular targets available such as poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), etc. for further exploration have also been discussed.

Nanoparticles and Microfluidic Devices in Cancer Research

Cancer is considered the disease of the century, which can be easily understood considering its increasing incidence worldwide. Over the last years, nanotechnology has been presenting promising theranostic approaches to tackle cancer, as the development of nanoparticle-based therapies. But, regardless of the promising outcomes within in vitro settings, its translation into the clinics has been delayed. One of the main reasons is the lack of an appropriate in vitro model, capable to mimic the true environment of the human body, to test the designed nanoparticles. In fact, most of in vitro models used for the validation of nanoparticle-based therapies do not address adequately the complex barriers that naturally occur in a tumor scenario, as such as blood vessels, the interstitial fluid pressure or the interactions with surrounding cells that can hamper the proper delivery of the nanoparticles into the desired site. In this reasoning, to get a step closer to the in vivo reality, it has been proposed of the use of microfluidic devices. In fact, microfluidic devices can be designed on-demand to exhibit complex structures that mimic tissue/organ-level physiological architectures. Even so, despite microfluidic-based in vitro models do not compare with the reality and complexity of the human body, the most complex systems created up to now have been showing similar results to in vivo animal models. Microfluidic devices have been proven to be a valuable tool to accomplish more realistic tumour's environment. The recent advances in this field, and in particular, the ones enabling the rapid test of new therapies, and show great promise to be translated to the clinics will be overviewed herein.

Active Cellular and Subcellular Targeting of Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

Nanoparticle (NP)-mediated drug delivery (NMDD) for active targeting of diseases is a primary goal of nanomedicine. NPs have much to offer in overcoming the limitations of traditional drug delivery approaches, including off-target drug toxicity and the need for the administration of repetitive doses. In the last decade, one of the main foci in NMDD has been the realization of NP-mediated drug formulations for active targeted delivery to diseased tissues, with an emphasis on cellular and subcellular targeting. Advances on this front have included the intricate design of targeted NP-drug constructs to navigate through biological barriers, overcome multidrug resistance (MDR), decrease side effects, and improve overall drug efficacy. In this review, we survey advancements in NP-mediated drug targeting over the last five years, highlighting how various NP-drug constructs have been designed to achieve active targeted delivery and improved therapeutic outcomes for critical diseases including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer's disease. We conclude with a survey of the current clinical trial landscape for active targeted NP-drug delivery and how we envision this field will progress in the near future.