Near infrared fluorescent peptide nanoparticles for enhancing esophageal cancer therapeutic efficacy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29973582.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-04763-y and PMC identifier 6031624.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
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 α<sub>v</sub>β<sub>3</sub> 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.
Medical subject headings
- Antibiotics, Antineoplastic
- Drug Delivery Systems
- Epirubicin
- Esophageal Neoplasms
- Molecular Imaging