Erythrocyte–Cancer Hybrid Membrane Camouflaged Hollow Copper Sulfide Nanoparticles for Prolonged Circulation Life and Homotypic-Targeting Photothermal/Chemotherapy of Melanoma

Abstract

Cellular-membrane-coated nanoparticles have increasingly been pursued to leverage the natural cell functions for enhancing biocompatibility and improved therapeutic efficacy. Taking advantage of specialized cell membranes or combining functions from different membrane types facilitates the strengthening of their functionality. Herein, we fuse membrane materials derived from red blood cells (RBCs) and melanoma cells (B16-F10 cells) to create a hybrid biomimetic coating (RBC-B16), and RBC-B16 hybrid membrane camouflaged doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded hollow copper sulfide nanoparticles (DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs) are fabricated for combination therapy of melanoma. The DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs are comprehensively characterized, showing the inherent properties of the both source cells. Compared to the bare CuS NPs, the DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs exhibit highly specific self-recognition to the source cell line in vitro and achieve markedly prolonged circulation lifetime and enhanced homogeneous targeting abilities in vivo inherited from the source cells. Thus, the DOX-loaded [RBC-B16]-coated CuS NP platform exhibits excellent synergistic photothermal/chemotherapy with about 100% melanoma tumor growth inhibition rate. The reported strategy may contribute to personalized nanomedicine of various tumors by combining the RBCs with a homotypic cancer membrane accordingly on the surface of the nanoparticle.

Cell Membrane Nanotherapeutics: From Synthesis to Applications Emerging Tools for Personalized Cancer Therapy

“…One of the first examples of cancer cell membrane based personalized nanomedicine was obtained by fusing B16F10 and red blood cell (RBC) membrane and coating it onto doxorubicin loaded hollow copper sulfide nanoparticles. [ 133 ] This study demonstrated that the nanoparticle system has a remarkable homotypic targeting with increased circulation time, resulting in efficient tumor killing.…”

“…One approach involves the exploitation of heat energy, which if significant can cause the ablation of the tumor, or release of chemotoxic drugs to target cancer growth. [ 116,118,133–135 ] Alternatively, cytotoxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) can be generated through the use of photosensitizing agents and cause subsequent oxidation of biological molecules to induce cancer cell death. [ 119–121 ]…”

Cancer Cell Membrane-Coated Nanoparticles for Cancer Management

“…This will facilitate proper orientation of the membrane around the NP owing to electrostatic repulsion between the NP surface and negative extracellular membrane components [27]. To date, the types of synthetic NPs that have been wrapped with cell-derived membranes for cancer therapies include nanocrystals [54], nanocages [42], mineral-based or mesoporous silica [35,49,[55][56][57][58], polymeric cores [30,40,45,[59][60][61][62][63][64], organic and inorganic metal frameworks [44,51,[65][66][67], protein cores [68,69], and gold-based or magnetic nanoparticles [70][71][72] (Figure 4, Table 1). Poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA) is one of the most widely used NP cores due to its biodegradability, FDA approval, and ability to encapsulate many products [17][18][19].…”

“…Combination PTT and chemotherapy mediated by CCNPs has been most widely explored using DOX as the chemotherapeutic agent [42,57,76]. In all cases, the DOX had improved tumor delivery due to the cancer cell membrane coating of the system and DOX was able to act successfully in combination with PTT to decrease tumor growth.…”

“…In an unusual case of using multiple types of membranes to coat NPs, RBC and B16-F10 mouse melanoma membranes were mixed to create a hybrid membrane that provided increased immune evasion and tumor targeting, respectively. The membranes were wrapped around DOX-loaded copper sulfide NPs, and these NPs exhibited synergistic effects with close to 100% tumor growth inhibition [57]. Lastly, when DOX was loaded into the core of gold nanocages, the hyperthermia induced-release of DOX in the targeted cells inhibited the growth of both primary tumors and metastatic nodules in a highly metastatic 4T1 mouse mammary tumor model [42].…”