Front Pharmacol. 2018 Jun 12;9:582. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00582. eCollection 2018.

Human Albumin Fragments Nanoparticles as PTX Carrier for Improved Anti-cancer Efficacy.

Ge L^1,², You X³, Huang J³, Chen Y⁴, Chen L², Zhu Y¹, Zhang Y⁵, Liu X⁶, Wu J³, Hai Q¹.

Author information

1: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China.
2: School of Pharmacy, Xinjiang Medical University, Ürümqi, China.
3: Key Laboratory of Sensing Technology and Biomedical Instruments of Guangdong Province, School of Biomedical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
4: Nanjing iPharma Technology, Co., Ltd., Nanjing, China.
5: Department of Orthopedics, Xinqiao Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
6: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stomatology, Guanghua School of Stomatology, Hospital of Stomatology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

For enhanced anti-cancer performance, human serum albumin fragments (HSAFs) nanoparticles (NPs) were developed as paclitaxel (PTX) carrier in this paper. Human albumins were broken into fragments via degradation and crosslinked by genipin to form HSAF NPs for better biocompatibility, improved PTX drug loading and sustained drug release. Compared with crosslinked human serum albumin NPs, the HSAF-NPs showed relative smaller particle size, higher drug loading, and improved sustained release. Cellular and animal results both indicated that the PTX encapsulated HSAF-NPs have shown good anti-cancer performance. And the anticancer results confirmed that NPs with fast cellular internalization showed better tumor inhibition. These findings will not only provide a safe and robust drug delivery NP platform for cancer therapy, but also offer fundamental information for the optimal design of albumin based NPs.