Tumor targeting and intracytoplasmic drug delivery using polymer nanoparticles

Abstract

The targeted cancer chemotherapy is one of the most important goals of current anticancer research. The purpose of this study is to evaluate various self-assembled nanoparticles as candidates for cancer-targeted drug delivery and molecular imaging, and to investigate the mechanisms underlying the tumor targeting and intracellular drug delivery with self-assembled nanoparticles. Various self-assembled nanoparticles were prepared by combining different hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties and hydrophilic backbones. Their in vivo body distributions were studied by radionuclide imaging. The mechanisms underlying the tumor targeting were investigated in terms of the physicochemical properties of nanoparticles and tumor microenvironments. In addition, the series of events involved in cellular internalization of nanoparticles such as endocytosis, exocytosis, and intracellular drug release were investigated by flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. We strongly believe that this work can provide insight for the engineering of nanoparticles and be extended to cancer therapy and diagnosis, so as to delivery multiple therapeutic agents and imaging probes at high local concentrations.