Water-Soluble and Biocompatible Sono/Photosensitizer Nanoparticles for Enhanced Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Aims: Most sono/photosensitizers of cancer sonodynamic/photodynamic therapy (SDT/PDT), such as hypocrellin SL052, are water-insoluble, therefore restricting their clinical applications. In this article, we present a water-soluble nanocarrier to load the SDT/PDT sensitizer SL052 with improved pharmacokinetics and therapeutic efficacy. Materials & methods: Nanoclusters of polyvinylpyrrolidones with SL052 formed water-soluble nanoparticles (SL052-NPs) while retaining the chemical structure of SL052. Results: The experimental results show that SL052-NPs improve the drug‘s physicochemical properties and significantly enhance the efficacy of SL052 in terms of pharmacokinetics and cancer killing. Water-soluble SL052-NPs can be used to deliver the drug to deep cancer tissues. A potential benefit of SL052-NPs is that polyvinylpyrrolidones can help SL052 evade the reticuloendothelial system, thereby increasing circulation half-life and improving drug biodistribution. Conclusion: SL052-NPs greatly improved the physicochemical properties of SL052 without modifying its chemical structure, allowing for deep-site cancer drug delivery, imaging for diagnosis, and ultrasound or photocontrolled localized cancer therapy.

Keywords::

• cancer sonodynamic/photodynamic
• drug delivery
• nanocarrier
• polyvinylpyrollidone formulated nanoparticles
• sono/photosensitizer therapy

supplementary-material

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors received funding support from Quest PharmaTech Inc., the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (Idea Program), and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (CRD program). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Yeping Xiong, who performed transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering measurements.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received funding support from Quest PharmaTech Inc., the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (Idea Program), and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (CRD program). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.