Silk Particles as Carriers of Therapeutic Molecules for Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Although progress is observed in cancer treatment, this disease continues to be the second leading cause of death worldwide. The current understanding of cancer indicates that treating cancer should not be limited to killing cancer cells alone, but that the target is the complex tumor microenvironment (TME). The application of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems (DDS) can not only target cancer cells and TME, but also simultaneously resolve the severe side effects of various cancer treatment approaches, leading to more effective, precise, and less invasive therapy. Nanoparticles based on proteins derived from silkworms’ cocoons (like silk fibroin and sericins) and silk proteins from spiders (spidroins) are intensively explored not only in the oncology field. This natural-derived material offer biocompatibility, biodegradability, and simplicity of preparation methods. The protein-based material can be tailored for size, stability, drug loading/release kinetics, and functionalized with targeting ligands. This review summarizes the current status of drug delivery systems’ development based on proteins derived from silk fibroin, sericins, and spidroins, which application is focused on systemic cancer treatment. The nanoparticles that deliver chemotherapeutics, nucleic acid-based therapeutics, natural-derived agents, therapeutic proteins or peptides, inorganic compounds, as well as photosensitive molecules, are introduced.

Emerging Silk Material Trends: Repurposing, Phase Separation and Solution-Based Designs

“…A number of timely reviews have covered the biomedical use of silk [ 3 , 12 ], recombinant silks [ 15 ] and their applications (e.g., drug delivery [ 16 ], tissue engineering [ 17 ], additive manufacturing [ 18 ] and disease models [ 19 ]). For example, an excellent review of silk nanoparticles is included in this special issue on silk-based biomaterials [ 20 ]. Silk is also making a marked ingress into the cosmetics and personal care products industry.…”

Biomedical applications of silkworm ( Bombyx Mori ) proteins in regenerative medicine (a narrative review)

“…Chemotherapy is frequently used as the first-line treatment of a wide range of cancers because it can stop cancer progression. However, the therapeutic potential of chemotherapeutic agents is limited since they have side effects on normal and vital cells like cardiotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, gastrointestinal damage, and lung injury, given systemically at therapeutic doses (Florczak et al, 2020;Yewale et al, 2013). Furthermore, the use of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems can be advantageous because they do not only target cancer cells and tumor microenvironment, but also remove the KHOSROPANAH ET AL.…”

“…To note, nanoparticles made from proteins extracted from silkworm cocoons (such as SF and sericin) are under intense investigation. In vivo, the various SF-based materials demonstrate excellent bio-responses, containing enzyme-dependent degradation and low immunogenicity (Florczak et al, 2020;Jastrzebska et al, 2015). Silk-based carriers have been used to deliver a variety of therapeutic drugs in various cancer treatment approaches due to several advantages.…”

Systemic and Local Silk-Based Drug Delivery Systems for Cancer Therapy

“…The controllable processability of silk material into different morphologies, such as films, hydrogels, particles, sponges, scaffolds, or nonwoven meshes, can be advantageous for exploring the different administration routes of drugs. In anticancer therapies, silk-based drug delivery systems can be used locally by intratumoral and transdermal administration or systemically by intravenous injection [ 23 , 90 , 136 , 137 , 138 , 139 , 140 ]. The delivery of different classes of therapeutic molecules has been explored using a variety of formats of silk biomaterials.…”

“…Moreover, nanosized DDSs are able to penetrate through small capillaries across physiological barriers and be incorporated into cells. Therefore, silk-based nanoparticles, nanospheres, or nanocapsules for drug delivery have been extensively studied for treating various diseases, including cancer [ 90 , 136 ]. On the other hand, microsized particulate systems are also used as depot drug carriers for long-acting delivery, and they are usually administered intramuscularly or subcutaneously [ 104 ].…”