Tumor targeting and therapeutic assessments of RNA nanoparticles carrying α9-nAChR aptamer and anti-miR-21 in triple-negative breast cancers.

ABSTRACT: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is highly aggressive with a poor prognosis because of a lack of cell markers as drug targets. α9-Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) is expressed abundantly in TNBC; thus, it is a valuable biomarker for TNBC detection and treatment. In this study, we utilized thermodynamically stable three-way junction (3WJ) packaging RNA (pRNA) as the core to construct RNA nanoparticles with an α9-nAChR RNA aptamer as a targeting ligand and an anti-microRNA-21 (miR-21) as a therapeutic module. We compared the configuration of the two RNA nanoparticles and found that 3WJ-B-α9-nAChR-aptamer fluorescent RNA nanoparticles (3WJ-B-α9-apt-Alexa) exhibited better specificity for α9-nAChR in TNBC cells compared with 3WJ-C-α9-nAChR. Furthermore, 3WJ-B-α9-apt-Alexa bound mor

SUBMITTER: Liao YC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10400867 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature