In vivo evaluation of an anticancer drug delivery system based on heparinized mesoporous silica nanoparticles

Abstract

In this study, heparinized mesoporous silica nanoparticles (denoted as MSNs-HP) were used for loading an anticancer drug. MSNs-HP were found capable of penetrating into cancer cells and delaying the release of the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) according to its in vitro and in vivo release profiles. More interestingly, in vivo evaluation with animal xenograft models showed that the tumor inhibitory rate of loaded MSNs-HP (58%) was much higher than that of DOX alone inside the nanoparticles (18%) and close to that of large doses of DOX (67%, 7-fold higher in dosage than DOX inside the nanoparticles), indicating that the use of MSNs-HP significantly increased the antitumor efficacy of DOX. The reason for the efficacy of this nanoparticle–drug system against tumor growth might be the synergy of these two components in inducing tumor cell apoptosis and tumor necrosis, and inhibiting tumor angiogenesis. Furthermore, this system was found safer than large doses of the drug. All the above might enable MSNs-HP to be a potential highly efficient and less toxic carrier for anticancer drug delivery.