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An albumin-based nanosystem for cocktail therapy of breast cancer amplifies the therapeutic efficacy of combination chemotherapy with photodynamic therapy

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Abstract

Combination chemotherapy is a crucial therapeutic strategy to improve the therapeutic efficacy of breast cancer in clinic. When combined with photodynamic therapy (PDT), the therapeutic efficacy can be further enhanced not only by PDT-induced phototoxicity, but also by PDT-induced photochemical internalization which facilitates the intracellular delivery and endo/lysosomes escape of drugs, therefore exhibit considerable potential in clinical treatment of breast cancer. Herein, a novel cocktail therapeutic strategy based on albumin-based nanosystem was established by covalently modifying human serum albumin (HSA) with all-trans retinoic acid (RA) and chlorin e6 (Ce6) to form HSA-RA-Ce6 (HRC) conjugate, and using paclitaxel (PTX) to induce self-assembly of HRC to form HRC@PTX nanoparticles (HRC@PTX NPs). The HRC@PTX NPs could amplify the therapeutic efficacy of combination chemotherapy of RA and PTX with Ce6-mediated PDT. The HRC@PTX NPs were characterized with a mean particle size of 174.1 ± 2.1 nm and a slightly negative zeta potential and exhibited good stability and hemocompatibility. The HRC@PTX NPs could promote the cellular uptake of drugs by MCF-7 cells and MDA-MB-231 cells and produce ROS to amplify the synergistic anti-tumor efficacy. The in vitro inhibitory effects on tumor growth investigated on monolayer and three-dimensional tumor spheroids revealed that HRC@PTX NPs exhibited significantly higher anti-tumor activity when exposed to 660-nm laser. These results demonstrated that HRC@PTX NPs could be developed as a promising cocktail therapeutic strategy for synergistic breast cancer therapy.

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Data and code availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (ZR2021MC091), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81703391) and the College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program of Shandong Province (S202110440055).

Funding

Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, ZR2021MC091, Jing Zhang, National Natural Science Foundation of China, 81703391, Feng Zhao

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Author notes

  1. Wenxia Qi and Shenglan Wang contribute equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Pharmacy, Binzhou Medical University, 346# Guanhai Road, Yantai, 264003, People’s Republic of China

    Wenxia Qi, Shenglan Wang, Heng Yang, Feng Zhao, Jingtian Han & Jing Zhang

  2. Department of Pharmacy, Taian Municipal Hospital, Taian, 271000, People’s Republic of China

    Tingting Luo

Authors
  1. Wenxia Qi
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  2. Shenglan Wang
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  3. Heng Yang
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  4. Tingting Luo
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  5. Feng Zhao
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  7. Jing Zhang
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Correspondence to Jing Zhang.

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Qi, W., Wang, S., Yang, H. et al. An albumin-based nanosystem for cocktail therapy of breast cancer amplifies the therapeutic efficacy of combination chemotherapy with photodynamic therapy. J Mater Sci 58, 8952–8968 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08590-5

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