Novel polysaccharide building hybrid nanoparticles: remodelling TAMs to target ERα-positive breast cancer

Abstract

With the increasing number of oncology patients and the use of chemotherapeutic agents, tumour multidrug resistance is becoming more and more prevalent. The search for new tumour treatment strategies to overcome tumour multidrug resistance is urgent. In this study, we designed GSH and ROS dual-responsive tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs)-targeted nanoparticles (NPs) for the co-delivery of the clinical first-line anti-breast cancer chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (PTX) and baicalin (Bai), which re-educates TAMs to alter their phenotype. We synthesised oligohyaluronic acid-mannose-folic acid (oHA-Man-FA, HMF) and astragalus polysaccharide-dithiodipropionic acid-paeoniflorol (APS-S-Pae, ASP), two hybrid materials that can self-assemble in water to form hybrid nanoparticles (HP-NPs) co-loaded with paclitaxel and baicalin (HP-NPs@PTX/Bai). The experimental results show that our designed hybrid nanoparticles can be specifically released in the tumour microenvironment and deliver the antitumor drug PTX as well as Bai, which reshapes the phenotype of TAMs, to the tumour site. The hybrid nanoparticles not only effectively re-educated TAMs from M2 TAM to M1 TAM, but also ameliorated the cytotoxic side effects caused by free PTX and provided better tumour suppression than free PTX and HP.

Keywords:

• Biological polysaccharides
• oligomeric hyaluronic acid derivative
• astragalus polysaccharide derivative
• hybrid nanoparticles
• remodelling TAMs
• targeting ERα-positive breast cancer

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by Taishan Scholar Foundation of Shandong Province (No. qnts20161035); Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Nos. ZR2019ZD24, ZR2019YQ30); Graduate Innovation Foundation of Yantai University, GIFYTU.