Abstract
Abstract Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide after cardiovascular disease. Depending on the type and the location of the tumor, several cancer treatments are implemented. Among these, the three most conventional therapies are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, there are other therapeutic approaches such as photodynamic therapy (PDT). PDT relies on the combined action of light, a photoactivable molecule called photosensitizer (PS) and molecular oxygen. Most of the PSs used for clinical applications are not cancer-cell specific. One of the solutions to overcome this problem is the use of nanoparticles (NPs) to induce a passive targeting. It is also possible to graft a vector onto the NPs to specifically target membrane receptors overexpressed in the tumor cells or neovessels surrounding the tumor. In this review, we focus on the NPs loaded with PSs and coupled to peptides for targeted PDT. We described nanosystems that targeted Neuropilin-1 (NRP-1), αvβ3 integrins, nucleolin membrane receptor, epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor, protein-glutamine-gamma-glutamyltransferase (TGM2), p32, transferrin, PD-1, and mitochondrial membrane. The use of a cell absorbing-peptide is also described.
Highlights
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world after cardiovascular disease [1]
The in vitro and in vivo tests confirmed that the peptides DKPPR, ATWLPPR, CRGDK, and tLyp-1 targeted neuropilin - (NRP-)1 receptor, which has been evaluated in the whole sections of 65 primary breast carcinomas, 95 primary colorectal adenocarcinomas, 90 primary lung carcinomas, 59 additional human metastases, and 16 xenografts
NRP-1 was evaluated in mouse embryos, where their expression was limited to the nervous system, endocardium, and vascular smooth muscle and in endothelium on subsets of vessels
Summary
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world after cardiovascular disease [1]. The delivery of NPs into the tumor was improved by coupling peptides that target membrane receptors localized on the cancer cell surface or the surrounding neovessels. Different vectors are described in the literature such as folic acid that targets folic acid receptor over-expressed on many tumoral cell membranes [16], but can suffer from low stability [17]. We already describe in a review [23] all the advantages of using peptides such as their small size, they present good tissue permeability, rapid access to the tumor site, they can cross a disturbed blood–brain barrier (BBB), and they present low antigenicity They are easy to synthesize in liquid or solid phases, easy to modify (pseudopeptides), easy to link to a spacer via amide bond for example, they can present high affinity for receptors and rapid clearance from the body. The use of a specific cell absorbing-peptide is described
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