Doxorubicin-loaded cell-derived nanovesicles: an alternative targeted approach for anti-tumor therapy

Abstract

Wei Jiang Goh,1,2 Choon Keong Lee,2 Shui Zou,2 Esther CY Woon,2 Bertrand Czarny,2,3 Giorgia Pastorin1,2,4 1NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Centre for Life Sciences (CeLS), 2Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore, 3School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) & Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, 4NUSNNI-NanoCore, National University of Singapore, T-Lab, Singapore, Singapore Abstract: Cell-derived nanovesicles (CDNs) are an emerging class of biological drug delivery systems (DDS) that retain the characteristics of the cells they were derived from, without the need for further surface functionalization. CDNs are also biocompatible, being derived from natural sources and also take advantage of the enhanced permeability and retention effect due to their nanodimensions. Furthermore, CDNs derived from monocytes were shown to have an in vivo targeting effect, accumulating at the tumor site in a previous study conducted in a mouse tumor model. Here, we report a systematic approach pertaining to various loading methods of the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin into our CDNs and examine the differential cellular uptake of drug-loaded CDNs in cancerous (HeLa) and healthy (HEK293) cell lines. Lastly, we proved that the addition of doxorubicin-loaded CDNs to the HeLa and HEK293 co-cultures showed a clear discrimination toward cancer cells at the cellular level. Our results further reinforce the intriguing potential of CDNs as an alternative targeted strategy for anticancer therapy. Keywords: cell-derived nanovesicles, cell targeting, doxorubicin, antitumor therapy, extracellular vesicles, biomimetic, bionanotechnology, antitumor strategies

Keywords

• Cell Derived Nanovesicles
• cell targeting
• doxorubicin
• anti-tumour therapy