Nanoparticles that communicate in vivo to amplify tumour targeting
PUBLICATION TYPE:
Journal Article
AUTHORS:
Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Ji-Ho Park, Kevin Y. Lin, Neetu Singh, Christian Schwöppe, Rolf Mesters, Wolfgang E. Berdel, Erkki Ruoslahti, Michael J. Sailor & Sangeeta N. Bhatia
SOURCE:
Nature Materials 10, 545–552 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3049
URL:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nmat3049
ABSTRACT:
Nanomedicines have enormous potential to improve the precision of cancer therapy, yet our ability to efficiently home these materials to regions of disease in vivo remains very limited. Inspired by the ability for communication to improve targeting in biological systems, such inflammatory cell recruitment to sites of disease, we construct systems where synthetic biological and nanotechnological components communicate to amplify disease targeting in vivo. These systems are composed of ‘Signalling’ modules (nanoparticles or engineered proteins) that target tumours and then locally active the coagulation cascade to broadcast tumour location to clot-targeted ‘Receiving’ nanoparticles in circulation that carry a diagnostic or therapeutic cargo, thereby amplifying their delivery. We show that communicating nanoparticle systems can be composed from multiple types of Signalling and Receiving modules, can transmit information via multiple molecular pathways in coagulation, can operate autonomously, and can target over 40-fold higher doses of chemotherapeutics to tumours than non-communicating controls.
