Enhanced retention and anti-tumor efficacy of liposomes by changing their cellular uptake and pharmacokinetics behavior

Although PEGylated liposome-based drug delivery systems hold great promising applications for cancer therapy due to their prolonged blood circulation time, PEGylation significantly reduces their cellular uptake, which markedly impairs the in vivo tumor retention and antitumor efficiency of drug-loaded liposomes. Most importantly, it has been proved that repeated injections of PEGylated liposomes with cell cycle specific drug such as topotecan (TPT) in the same animal at certain time intervals will induce “accelerated blood clearance” (ABC) phenomenon, which decreases the tumor accumulation of drug-loaded liposomes and presents a tremendous challenge to the clinical use of liposome-based drug delivery systems. Herein, we developed a zwitterionic poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB) modified liposome-based drug delivery system. The presence of PCB could avoid protein adsorption and enhance the stability of liposomes as that for PEG. Quite different from the PEGylated liposomes, the pH-sensitive PCBylated liposomes were internalized into cells via endocytosis with excellent cellular uptake and drug release ability. Furthermore, the PCBylated liposomes would avoid ABC phenomenon, which promoted the tumor accumulation of drug-loaded liposomes in vivo. With higher tumor accumulation and cellular uptake, the PCBylated drug-loaded liposomes significantly inhibited tumor growth and provided a promising approach for cancer therapy.