Synergistic co-delivery of doxorubicin and paclitaxel by porous PLGA microspheres for pulmonary inhalation treatment

• We developed PLGA microspheres featured highly porous structures with a low density.
• The features of the PLGA microspheres are beneficial for pulmonary drug delivery.
• We studied the synergistic effect of simultaneous release of doxorubicin and paclitaxel in the PLGA microspheres.
• High ratio of doxorubicin to paclitaxel was required to maximize the therapeutic effect.
• The sustained-release porous PLGA microspheres containing DOX and PTX have the potential for future clinical application.

PLGA porous microspheres loaded with doxorubicin (DOX) and paclitaxel (PTX) were developed for in situ treatment of metastatic lung cancer. The synergistic effect of the combined drugs was investigated against B16F10 cells to obtain the optimal prescription for in vivo studies. The combination therapy showed great synergism when DOX was the majority in the combination therapy, while they showed moderate antagonism when PTX is in major. The combination of DOX and PTX at a molar ratio of 5/1 showed the best synergistic therapeutic effect in the free form. However, the drugs exhibited more synergism in the PLGA microspheres at a molar ratio of 2/1, due to the difference in drug release rate. The in vivo study verified the synergism of DOX and PTX at the optimal molar ratio. These results suggested that dual encapsulation of DOX and PTX in porous PLGA microspheres would be a promising technology for long effective lung cancer treatment.

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