Engineering a folic acid-decorated ultrasmall gemcitabine nanocarrier for breast cancer therapy: Dual targeting of tumor cells and tumor-associated macrophages.

ABSTRACT: Combination of passive targeting with active targeting is a promising approach to improve the therapeutic efficacy of nanotherapy. However, most reported polymeric systems have sizes above 100 nm, which limits effective extravasation into tumors that are poorly vascularized and have dense stroma. This will, in turn, limit the overall effectiveness of the subsequent uptake by tumor cells via active targeting. In this study, we combined the passive targeting via ultra-small-sized gemcitabine (GEM)-based nanoparticles (NPs) with the active targeting provided by folic acid (FA) conjugation for enhanced dual targeted delivery to tumor cells and tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). We developed an FA-modified prodrug carrier based on GEM (PGEM) to load doxorubicin (DOX), for co-del

SUBMITTER: Moharil P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9072252 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature