Development and characterization of folic acid-functionalized apoferritin as a delivery vehicle for epirubicin against MCF-7 breast cancer cells

Abstract

Epirubicin (Epr) is an effective chemotherapeutic drug; however, the clinical amenability of Epr is limited by its highly toxic interaction with normal cells. This toxicity can be decreased by utilizing nanocarriers and targeted drug delivery systems. This work describes an approach for the delivery of Epr via encapsulation in the horse spleen apoferritin (HsAFr) cavity. The encapsulation was achieved by the disassembling of apoferritin into subunits at pH 2 followed by its reformation at pH 7.4 in the presence of Epr. The surface of HsAFr-encapsulated Epr was modified with folic acid (FA) for optimal targeting of breast cancer cells (MCF-7). The use of FA to functionalize HsAFr could enhance the cellular uptake efficiency via FA-receptor-mediated endocytosis. UV-vis spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, circular dichroism (CD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were utilized for structural characterization of the HsAFr-Epr and HsAFr-Epr-FA complexes. The comparison of the anti-cancer activities across the HsAFr-Epr-FA complex and the free Epr drug was performed using the MTT viability assay on MCF-7.

Au Catalyzing Control Release NO in vivo and Tumor Growth-Inhibiting Effect in Chemo-Photothermal Combination Therapy

“…FA receptors over-expressed MCF-7 cells were used to evaluate the cellular uptake of FA-MMSN-Au/DOX nanoparticles. 34,35 As shown in Figure 5A, free Dox was mainly localized in the nuclei due to its high affinity with DNA. The red fluorescence of DOX appeared in the cytoplasm for FA-MMSN-Au/DOX group, and the fluorescence intensity markedly decreased after preincubation with FA for 2 h, indicating that the target-specific endocytosis of FA-MMSN-Au/DOX was mediated by FA receptors.…”

Cancer-Targeted Controlled Delivery of Chemotherapeutic Anthracycline Derivatives Using Apoferritin Nanocage Carriers

“…It has already been shown that several drugs, such as cisplatin, streptomycin, doxorubicin, and daunomycin, can be encapsulated in APO [29,30,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. Recently, epirubicin-carrying APO nanocarriers have been applied to study MCF-7 breast cancer cells survivability upon nanodrug treatment [47]. Drug encapsulation efficiency of 7.7% has been achieved.…”

Apoferritin nanocages for targeted delivery of idarubicin against breast cancer cells

“…Ferritin is used in a variety of applications such as bioelectronics, 13 biosensing, 14 imaging, 15 water purification, 16 and drug delivery. 17,18 Apoferritin is a ferritin without an iron core. The ferritin has 24 subunits.…”