Antitumor and antimetastatic effects of pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles in B₁₆ bearing mice

Abstract

Using nanoparticle delivery for anticancer therapy is a potential new drug modality. We developed a novel gelatinase–stimuli nanoparticle. In this study, we studied the antitumor and antimetastasis effect of pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles and evaluated the correlation between E-cadherin expression and lung metastasis in subcutaneous xenograft model. Compared with free pemetrexed, pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles exhibited the best antitumor and antimetastasis efficacy among the four therapeutic groups. The study also indicated that there was an inverse correlation between lung metastasis and E-cadherin expression. These results showed pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles may be a potent drug for tumor therapy and our preclinical data could provide new direction for clinical therapy of malignant melanoma.

Keywords:

• Antimetastsis
• antitumor
• drug delivery
• PEG–Peptide–PCL nanoparticles
• pemetrexed

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No 81472216) and the Anhui Province Natural Science Foundation of China (No 1408085QH187).