Cells have been explored as a promising drug delivery system for cancer treatment with high specificity due to the unique tumor tropic feature. One challenge that prevents cell-mediated delivery of anti-cancer drugs is the early release of drug payloads before reaching tumor tissues, which leads to a rapid decline in viability and normal functions of the cell carriers. Here we develop a nanoparticle-laden macrophage system to effectively deliver doxorubicin to treat cancer and we show that, by tailored-designing the nanoparticle structure, a suitable drug release property of nanoparticles can be obtained, which protects early release of drug and better preserves the cell functions during the transmigration process towards tumor tissues. The nanoparticle-laden macrophages are found first accumulating in lung and then specifically migrating to tumor tissues with deep intratumoral penetration in 8 to 23 hours upon administration. We demonstrate that this nanoparticle-laden macrophage approach is capable of generating an enhanced tumor suppression with low doses of drugs administrated and little systemic toxicity is induced, suggesting this method as a promising drug delivery strategy with great potentials of providing high drug delivery specificity and safety.

Nanoparticle-laden macrophage as a tumor tropic drug delivery system for improved cancer treatment

255th National Meeting (2018)

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