Ultrasound triggered local sequential reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide release for enhanced cerasomal drug delivery

Abstract

Liposomal drug delivery for tumor therapy was still suffered from low stability, limited delivering efficiency and poor tumor penetration, greatly compromising the therapeutic efficacy. Herein, a stable and ultrasound triggered cerasomal drug delivery system was developed by loading doxorubicin (DOX) into stable liposomal cerasome, which was self-assembled from cerasome-forming lipid (CFL), sonosensitizer of porphyrin lipid (PL), nitric oxide (NO) donor of DSPE-PEG2000-SNO and unsaturated phospholipids DOPC, resulting in DOX@PC-SNO with stable siloxane network and S-nitrosothiol on surface, sonosensitizer in lipid bilayer and DOX in the core. DOX@PC-SNO can prevent drug leakage during blood circulation and efficiently accumulate at the tumor site at 24 h post-injection, while controllably generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon local ultrasound irradiation on tumor, which can not only use for SDT, but also operate as a switch for on-demand controlled release of internal DOX and external NO, resulting in specific delivery and high penetration of chemotherapeutic drug into the deep tumor, thus greatly improved antitumor efficacy without observed side effects.