The therapeutic efficacy of camptothecin-encapsulated supramolecular nanoparticles

Nanomaterials have been increasingly employed as drug(s)-incorporated vectors for drug delivery due to their potential of maximizing therapeutic efficacy while minimizing systemic side effects. However, there have been two main challenges for these vectors: (i) the existing synthetic approaches are cumbersome and incapable of achieving precise control of their structural properties, which will affect their biodistribution and therapeutic efficacies, and (ii) lack of an early checkpoint to quickly predict which drug(s)-incorporated vectors exhibit optimal therapeutic outcomes. In this work, we utilized a new rational developmental approach to rapidly screen nanoparticle (NP)-based cancer therapeutic agents containing a built-in companion diagnostic utility for optimal therapeutic efficacy. The approach leverages the advantages of a self-assembly synthetic method for preparation of two different sizes of drug-incorporated supramolecular nanoparticles (SNPs), and a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging-based biodistribution study to quickly evaluate the accumulation of SNPs at a tumor site in vivo and select the favorable SNPs for in vivo therapeutic study. Finally, the enhanced in vivo anti-tumor efficacy of the selected SNPs was validated by tumor reduction/inhibition studies. We foresee our rational developmental approach providing a general strategy in the search of optimal therapeutic agents among the diversity of NP-based therapeutic agents.