Hyaluronic acid-modified selenium nanoparticles for enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of paclitaxel in lung cancer therapy

Abstract

Targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics by functionalized nanoparticles exhibits a wonderful prospect for cancer treatment. In this paper, selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) was linked with hyaluronic acid (HA) to prepare tumor-targeted delivery vehicle HA-SeNPs, and HA-SeNPs was loaded with paclitaxel (PTX) to fabricate functionalized selenium nanoparticles HA-Se@PTX. HA-Se@PTX showed greater uptake in A549 cells in comparison with that in HUVEC, verifying HA-mediated specific uptake of HA-Se@PTX. HA-Se@PTX was capable of entering A549 cells via clathrin-associated endocytosis and showed faster drug release in cancer cell microenvironment in comparison with normal physiological environment. HA-Se@PTX could obviously inhibit the proliferation, migration and invasion of A549 cells and trigger A549 cells apoptosis. Moreover, active targeting functionalized selenium nanoparticles HA-Se@PTX showed greater in vivo antitumor activity compared with free PTX or passive targeting delivery system Se@PTX. In addition, HA-Se@PTX exhibited negligible toxicity on the major organs of mice. In a word, HA-Se@PTX may develop into a valuable nanoscale antitumor drug agent for lung cancer treatment.

Keywords:

• Non-small cell lung carcinoma
• tumor targeting
• hyaluronic acid
• paclitaxel
• nanoparticles

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest regarding this publication.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Guangzhou Medical Health Science and Technology Project [No. 20171A010275] and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [No. 2017M612632].