Retro-inverso follicle-stimulating hormone peptide-mediated polyethylenimine complexes for targeted

Retro-inverso follicle-stimulating hormone peptide-mediated polyethylenimine complexes for targeted ovarian cancer gene therapy

Author：Mengyu Zhang, Mingxing Zhang, Jing Wang, Qingqing Cai, Ran Zhao, Yi Yu, Haiyan Tai, Xiaoyan Zhang, Congjian Xu 《Drug Delivery》

ABSTRACTS

Background: The development of nanoparticle drug delivery systems with targeted ligands has the potential to increase treatment efficiency in ovarian cancer.

Methods: We developed a 21-amino acid peptide, YTRDLVYGDPARPGIQGTGTF (L-FP21) conjugated to polyethylenimine (PEI) and methoxy polyethylene glycol (mPEG) to prepare a nanoparticle drug vehicle to target follicle-stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR) in ovarian cancer. At the same time, we optimized the ligand of the nanoparticle vehicle using D-peptides, which consist of D-amino acids (D-FP21). Nanoparticle vehicles carrying the therapeutic gene plasmid growth-regulated oncogene alpha (pGRO-α) short hairpin RNA (shRNA) (FP21-PEG-PEI/pGRO-α) were prepared for further investigation.

Results: Compared with L-FP21, D-FP21 exhibited improved biological stability and higher uptake rate for FSHR-expressing ovarian cancer cells. The cytotoxicity of the L, D-FP21-PEG-PEI/pGRO-α complexes were significantly lower than that of the PEI/pGRO-α complex. The nanoparticle drug with the targeted ligand showed higher transfection efficiencies and improved anti-proliferation effects for ovarian cancer cells than that without the targeted ligand (mPEG-PEI/pGRO-α). Furthermore, an in vivo evaluation of an antitumor assay indicated that D-FP21-PEG-PEI/pGRO-α inhibited the growth of tumor spheroids considerably more than L-FP21-PEG-PEI/pGRO-α; their tumor inhibition rates were 58.5% and 33.3%, respectively.

Conclusions: D-FP21-PEG-PEI/plasmid DNA is a safe and efficient gene delivery vehicle for ovarian cancer targeted therapy.