Anti-glioblastoma efficacy and safety of paclitaxel-loading Angiopep-conjugated dual targeting PEG-PCL nanoparticles

Therapeutic effect of glioma is often limited due to low permeability of delivery systems across the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) and poor penetration into the tumor tissue. In order to overcome the two barriers, we proposed Angiopep-conjugated PEG-PCL nanoparticles (ANG-PEG-NP) as a dual targeting drug delivery system for glioma treatment basing on low density lipoprotein receptor related protein (LRP) receptor not only over-expressed on BBB but also on glioma cells. This system could transport across BBB through LRP-mediated transcytosis and then targeted glioma via LRP-mediated endocytosis. In this study, we evaluated the preliminary availability and safety of ANG-PEG-NP for glioma treatment. The penetration, distribution, and accumulation into 3D glioma spheroid and in vivo glioma region of ANG-PEG-NP were obviously higher than that of plain PEG-PCL nanoparticles (PEG-NP). The anti-glioblastoma efficacy of paclitaxel (PTX) loading ANG-PEG-NP was significantly enhanced as compared to that of Taxol and PEG-NP. Preliminary safety results showed that no acute toxicity to hematological system, liver, kidney and brain tissue was observed after intravenous administration with a dose of 100 mg/kg blank ANG-PEG-NP per day for a week. Results indicate that Angiopep-conjugated dual targeting PEG-PCL nanoparticle is a potential brain targeting drug delivery system for glioma treatment.