Targeted Delivery of Irinotecan to Colon Cancer Cells Using Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor-conjugated Liposomes

Overview

Journal Biomed Eng Online

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Biomedical Engineering

Date 2022 Aug 2

PMID 35918704

Authors

Yongwei Liu

Xinghui Li

Renqun Pen

Wei Zuo

Ya Chen

Xiuying Sun

Juhua Gou

Qianwen Guo

Maoling Wen

Wuqi Li

Shuangjiang Yu

Hao Liu

Min Huang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: CPT-11 (irinotecan) is one of the most efficient agents used for colorectal cancer chemotherapy. However, as for many other chemotherapeutic drugs, how to minimize the side effects of CPT-11 still needs to be thoroughly described.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop the CPT-11-loaded DSPE-PEG 2000 targeting EGFR liposomal delivery system and characterize its targeting specificity and therapeutic effect on colorectal cancer (CRC) cells in vitro and in vivo.

Results: The synthesized liposome exhibited spherical shapes (84.6 ± 1.2 nm to 150.4 nm ± 0.8 nm of estimated average sizes), good stability, sustained release, and enough drug loading (55.19%). For in vitro experiments, SW620 cells treated with CPT-11-loaded DSPE-PEG targeting EGFR liposome showed lower survival extended level of intracellular ROS production. In addition, it generated an enhanced apoptotic cell rate by upregulating the protein expression of both cleaved-caspase-3 and cleaved-caspase-9 compared with those of SW620 cells treated with free CPT-11. Importantly, the xenograft model showed that both the non-target and EGFR-targeted liposomes significantly inhibited tumor growth compared to free CPT-11.

Conclusions: Compared with the non-target CPT-11-loaded DSPE-PEG liposome, CPT-11-loaded DSPE-PEG2000 targeting EGFR liposome treatment showed much better antitumor activity in vitro in vivo. Thus, our findings provide new assets and expectations for CRC targeting therapy.

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