The poor permeability of glioma parenchyma represents a major limit for antiglioblastoma drug delivery. Gracilaria lemaneiformis polysaccharide (GLP), which has a high binding affinity to αvβ3 integrin overexpressed in glioma cells, was employed in the present study to functionalize selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) to achieve antiglioblastoma efficacy. GLP-SeNPs showed satisfactory size distribution, high stability, and selectivity between cancer and normal cells. In U87 glioma cell membrane, which has a high integrin expression level, GLP-SeNPs exhibited significantly higher cellular uptake than unmodified SeNPs. As expected, U87 cells exhibited a greater uptake of GLP-SeNPs than C6 cells with low integrin expression level. Furthermore, the internalization of GLP-SeNPs was inhibited by cyclo-(Arg-Gly-Asp-Phe-Lys) peptides, suggesting that cellular uptake into U87 cells and C6 cells occurred via αvβ3 integrin-mediated endocytosis. For U87 cells, the cytotoxicity of SeNPs decorated by GLP was enhanced significantly because of the induction of various apoptosis signaling pathways. Internalized GLP-SeNPs triggered intracellular reactive oxygen species downregulation. Therefore, p53, MAPKs, and AKT pathways were activated to advance cell apoptosis. These findings suggest that surface decoration of nanomaterials with GLP could be an efficient strategy for design and preparation of glioblastoma targeting nanodrugs.
The chirality of nanoparticles directly influences their transport and biological effects under physiological conditions, but the details of this phenomenon have rarely been explored. Herein, chiral GSH‐anchored selenium nanoparticles (G@SeNPs) are fabricated to investigate the effect of their chirality on their transport and antioxidant activity. G@SeNPs modified with different enantiomers show opposite handedness with a tunable circular dichroism signal. Noninvasive positron emission tomography imaging clearly reveals that 64Cu‐labeled l‐G@SeNPs experience distinctly different transport among the major organs from that of their d‐and dl‐counterparts, demonstrating that the chirality of the G@SeNPs influences the biodistribution and kinetics. Taking advantage of the strong homologous cell adhesion and uptake, l‐G@SeNPs have been shown here to effectively prevent oxidation damage caused by palmitic acid in insulinoma cells.
Accumulation of palmitic acid (PA) in human bodies could cause damage to pancreatic β cells and lead to chronic diseases by generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Therefore, it is of great significance to search for nutrition-available agents with antioxidant activity to protect pancreatic islet cells against PA-induced damage. Phycocyanin (PC) and selenium (Se) have been reported to have excellent antioxidant activity. In this study, PC-functionalized selenium nanoparticles (PC-SeNPs) were synthesized to investigate the in vitro protective effects on INS-1E rat insulinoma β cells against PA-induced cell death. A potent protective effect was achieved by regulation of particle size and PC content. Among three PC-SeNPs (165, 235, and 371 nm), PC-SeNPs-235 nm showed the highest cellular uptake and the best protective activities. For cell cycle analysis, PC-SeNPs showed a better protective effect on PA-induced INS-1E cell apoptosis than PC or SeNPs, and PC-SeNPs-235 nm exhibited the best effect. Further mechanistic studies demonstrated that PA induced overproduction of intracellular ROS, mitochondria fragmentation, activation of caspase-3, -8, and -9, and cleavage of PARP. However, pretreatment of the cells with PC-SeNPs effectively blocked these intracellular events, which suggests that PC-SeNPs could protect INS-1E cells against PA-induced cell apoptosis via attenuating oxidative stress and downstream signaling pathways. This finding provides a great promising nutritional approach for protection against diseases related to islet damage.
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