Abstract

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have the capability to initiate tumor, to sustain tumor growth, to maintain the heterogeneity of tumor, and are closely linked to the failure of chemotherapy due to their self-renewal and multilineage differentiation capability with an innate resistance to cytotoxic agents [1]. Polymersomes (polymer vesicles) are excellent delivery vehicles for anticancer drugs and siRNA [2, 3]. Herein, we designed and synthesized a novel anti-EpCAM (epithelial cell adhesion molecule)-monoclonal-antibody-labeled CSCs-targeting, noncytotoxic and pH-sensitive polymersome as a nano-carrier of anticancer drug and siRNA (to overcome CSCs drug resistance by silencing the expression of oncogenes). This polymersome showed high delivery efficacy of both anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) and siRNA to the CSCs because it was decorated by the monoclonal antibodies targeting to the CSCs-surface-specific marker. Compared to non-CSCs-targeting polymersomes, the DOX or siRNA loaded CSCs-targeting polymersomes exhibited much better CSCs killing and tumor growth inhibition capabilities with lower toxicity to normal cells (IC _50,DOX decreased by 80%), demonstrating promising potential applications in nanomedicine (Fig. 1) [1].

Keywords: polymer vesicles, anticancer drug delivery, siRNA, self-assembly

文章链接：Journal of Controlled Release 2017, 259, e60-e61.