Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers for women, with a 5-year survival rate of only 49%. Poor survival is largely due to late detection of the cancer and the highly metastatic nature of it. More than 80% of ovarian cancer patients have metastasis into the peritoneum, which makes treating and eradicating the cancer more challenging. Current treatments involve first-line chemotherapeutics paclitaxel and carboplatin, but these have produced poor clinical outcomes due to insufficient delivery of the drug to diseased cells and detrimental side effects for the patient. Targeted drug delivery aims to selectively deliver drugs to tumor cells, with reduced off-target effects on healthy tissues. Our liposomal nanoparticles are designed to target metastatic ovarian cancer via binding to a heat shock protein that healthy cells express intracellularly, while ovarian cancer cells upregulate cell surface expression of the protein. The nanoparticles were optimized <i>in vitro</i> for binding and uptake to human and murine ovarian cancer cells. Biodistribution of the optimized nanoparticles was analyzed in a metastatic, syngeneic mouse model for colocalization with and uptake by RFP-labeled cancer cells. In vivo efficacy was analyzed via animal survival and final tumor burden.

Targeted nanoparticle drug delivery for treatment of metastatic ovarian cancer

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.