Therapeutic Effect of Glypican-3 Gene Silencing Using siRNA for Ovarian Cancer in a Murine Peritoneal Dissemination Model

Abstract

Ovarian cancer is known to be the most lethal gynecologic cancer. It has been reported that Glypican-3 (Gpc3) expression induces immune responses, promotes the progression in ovarian cancer. Then, we focused on this Gpc3 gene silencing, tried to prepare siRNA delivery system. In this chapter, we introduce one of the therapeutic proposals in terms of novel drug delivery system using siRNA as a targeting medicine. This chapter introduces our works about preparation of siRNA-PLGA hybrid micelles to deliver the siRNA into the ovarian cancer cells and to evaluate gene silencing effects in mice model. As a result, siRNA-PLGA hybrid micelles were shown to effectively inhibit Gpc3 expression in vitro. In addition, siRNA-PLGA hybrid micelles also decreased the number of tumor nodes in the mesentery in vivo. These results suggested that Gpc3 could be a target molecule for ovarian cancer treatment and siRNA-PLGA hybrid micelles could be an effective siRNA delivery tool even in vivo.