Construction and in vitro and in vivo evaluation of folic acid-modified nanostructured lipid carriers loaded with paclitaxel and chlorin e6

Publication date: Available online 5 August 2019Source: International Journal of PharmaceuticsAuthor(s): Qibo Zhang, Jihui Zhao, Hongmei Hu, Yulu Yan, Xiaoge Hu, Kuan Zhou, Sirui Xiao, Yongtai Zhang, Nianping FengAbstractBreast cancer remains a major threat to women’s health, and the incidence of breast cancer continues to increase each year. Paclitaxel (PTX) is commonly used to treat breast cancer, but shows limited solubility and is associated with major side effects, limiting its clinical applications. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising treatment for breast cancer but is limited by the poor solubility of photosensitizers and difficulties in targeting and enriching the tumor tissue with photosensitizers. Here, we prepared a new nanocarrier system using nanostructured lipid carriers (PTX@FA-NLC-PEG-Ce6) harboring PTX, chlorin e6 (Ce6), and folic acid-targeted head to overcome the limitations of PTX and Ce6 in hydrophobicity and increase the target efficiency of chemotherapy drugs and photosensitizers at the tumor. The results showed that the drug-loading system met the requirements for intravenous injection, had tumor targeting ability, and could be easily taken up by MDA-MB-231 cells. Moreover, Ce6 could be dissociated from the surface of the drug-loading system and evenly distributed in cells after a period of time when the nanostructured lipid carriers had entered lysosomes through endocytosis. Additionally, reactive oxygen species were then produced to induce PD...
Source: International Journal of Pharmaceutics - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research