Int J Med Sci 2010; 7(4):197-208. doi:10.7150/ijms.7.197 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, China
2. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China
Aim: To prepare RGD-modified long circulating liposome (LCL) loading matrine (RGD-M-LCL) to improve the tumor-targeting and efficacy of matrine. Methods: LCL which was prepared with HSPC, cholesterol, DSPE-PEG2000 and DSPE-PEG-MAL was modified with an RGD motif confirmed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The encapsulation efficiency of RGD-M-LCL was also detected by HPLC. MTT assay was used to examine the effects of RGD-M-LCL on the proliferation of Bcap-37, HT-29 and A375 cells. The percentage of apoptotic cells and morphological changes in Bcap-37 cells treated with RGD-M-LCL were detected by Annexin-V-FITC/PI affinity assay and observed under light microscope, respectively. Results: Spherical or oval single-chamber particles of uniform sizes with little agglutination or adhesion were observed under transmission electronic microscope. The RGD motif was successfully coupled to the DSPE-PEG-MAL on liposomes, as confirmed by HPLC. An encapsulation efficiency of 83.13% was obtained when the drug-lipid molar ratio was 0.1, and the encapsulation efficiency was negatively related to the drug-lipid ratio in the range of 0.1~0.4, and to the duration of storage. We found that, compared with free matrine, RGD-M-LCL had much stronger in vitro activity, leading to anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects against cancer cells (P<0.01). Conclusion: RGD-M-LCL, a novel delivery system for anti-cancer drugs, was successfully prepared, and we demonstrated that the use of this material could augment the effects of matrine on cancer cells in vitro.
Keywords: Matrine, Liposomes, Cyclic arginine- glycine-aspartic acid, Drug delivery systems.