Carrier free nanomedicine for synergistic cancer therapy by initiating apoptosis and paraptosis

作者：Zheng, Rongrong; Liu, Yibin; Yu, Baixue; Zhao, Linping; Yang, Ni; Chen, Ali; Xu, Lin; Cheng, Hong^*; Jiang, Xueyan^*; Li, Shiying^*

来源：Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 2022, 622: 298-308.

DOI：10.1016/j.jcis.2022.04.090

• Carrier free nanomedicine
• Cell apoptosis
• Paraptosis
• Vacuolation
• Photodynamic therapy

Although photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been well-known as a promising anti-tumor treatment, its limited therapeutic efficiency remains to be a large challenge. In this study, a carrier free nanomedicine (designated as PyroMor) is developed to greatly initiate cell apoptosis and paraptosis for synergistic can-cer therapy. Pyropheophorbide-a (Pyro) and morusin (Mor) are capable of self-assembling into PyroMor, which has been testified to have superiority of improved stability, cellular internalization, and biocom-patibility. Because of efficient cellular uptake behavior, PyroMor could induce cellular paraptosis by Mor-caused vacuolation in mitochondria, ER and cytoplasm, contributing to improving the PDT efficacy of Pyro. Therefore, self-delivery PyroMor is able to accomplish synergistic anti-tumor effect via stimula-tion of cell apoptosis as well as paraptosis. In addition, in vivo studies also clarify that PyroMor presents passive tumor targeting delivery, leading to robust repressive effect on tumor proliferation with negligi-ble systemic toxicity. This strategy of combined cancer therapy by initiating both cell apoptosis and para-ptosis extremely benefits to the development of precise and effective cancer therapy in clinic.

• 单位
  广东药学院; 广州医学院; 南方医科大学; 5