Nanoparticles have been widely applied in diagnosis and therapy due to the high loading of insoluble drug, increased target accumulation and interaction with biological tissues. Recently, severe side effects of nanoparticles have been reported, but the underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. In our study, we aim to understand the safety of paclitaxel （PTX） loaded bovine albumin nanoparticles （BNPs） and active targeted PTX loaded BNPs to normal vital organ or tissue in vivo. The anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 （HER2/neu） peptide mimetic （AHNP） was covalent bound to surface of BNPs （AHNP-BNPs） to exert selected delivery to HER2＋ cells. In HER2＋ tumor xenographs, saline （control）, PTX traditional formula （medium of Cremophor EL-ethanol）, BNPs, and AHNP-BNPs were administrated to evaluate the toxicity. There is no severe neutropenia or anemia with treatment of BNPs and AHNP-BNPs compared with traditional PTX injection. We also evaluated their damage on normal organs, including liver, kidney, spleen, lung and heart to fully estimate the safety of AHNP-BNPs and BNPs delivery systems. We observed similar toxicity in liver and lung in mice treated with BNPs or PTX injection, but decreased liver damage in mice treated with AHNP-BNPs. Further studies are rcouired to confirm our conclusion.
It is a promising treatment strategy to use a nanoparticle-based drug delivery system for cancer patients, which can simultaneously deliver multiple drugs or genes in combination with therapy to induce synergistic effects and suppress drug resistance to the tumor. In this study, cationic nanostructured lipid carriers（cNLC） for co-loading anionic small-interfering RNAs（siRNA） and chemotherapeutic docetaxel（DTX） were prepared from different cationic lipids based on particle distribution and loading efficiency. In order to increase the cNLC＇s positive targeting capacity, a novel peptide SP94 was bound to the surface of cNLC（SP94-cNLC）. The cNLC showed good efficiency in loading siRNA and DTX. The SP94-cNLC revealed a better cytotoxicity compared with cNLC and Taxotere？, indicating that SP94 could successfully enhance the internalization capacity of nanoparticles to the liver cancer cells. This new type of cNLC is a potential vehicle when using in co-delivery of chemotherapeutics and siRNAs. The curcumin（CUR）/DTX co-delivery NLC could load both CUR and DTX in high efficiency and showed a sensibilization to DTX chemotherapy. The sensibilization was more obvious when it was used in the aggressive and resistant cancer cells. This CUR/DTX co-delivery system had good potential in treating cancer cells when chemotherapy drug showed little effect alone.
