Au-siRNA@ aptamer nanocages as a high-efficiency drug and gene delivery system for targeted lung cancer therapy

[Background]: Gene and chemical therapy has become one of the rising stars in the field of molecular medicine during the last two decades. However, there are still numerous challenges in the development of efficient, targeted, and safe delivery systems that can avoid siRNA degradation and reduce the toxicity and adverse effects of chemotherapy medicine.
[Results]: In this paper, a highly efficient AS1411 aptamer modified, dsDNA and MMP-2 cleavable peptide-fabricated gold nanocage vehicle, which could load doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) and siRNAs to achieve a combination of tumor responsive genetic therapy, chemotherapy, and photothermal treatment is presented. Our results show that this combined treatment achieved targeted gene silencing and tumor inhibition. After nearly one month of treatment with DOX-loaded Au-siRNA-PAA-AS1411 nanoparticles with one dose every three days in mice, a synergistic effect promoting the eradication of long-lived tumors was observed along with an increased survival rate of mice. The combined genetic, chemotherapeutic, and photothermal treatment group exhibited more than 90% tumor inhibition ratio (tumor signal) and a ~ 67% survival rate compared with a 30% tumor inhibition ratio and a 0% survival rate in the passive genetic treatment group.
[Conclusions]: The development of nanocarriers with double-stranded DNA and MMP-2 cleavable peptides provides a new strategy for the combined delivery of gene and chemotherapy medicine. Au-siRNA-PAA-AS1411 exerts high anticancer activities on lung cancer, indicating immense potentials for clinical application.
This work is supported by the Special fund for science and technology innovation of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (YG2017MS70, YG2015MS62, AF0300179 ), National Key Basic Research Program (973 Project) (No.2015CB931802), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017FYA0205301), Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology (XC-ZXSJ-02-2016-05), the National Natural Scientific Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81225010, 81028009 and 31170961), the 863 project of China (Project No. 2014AA020700) and the Shanghai Science and Technology Fund (13NM1401500).