Long Circulation Red-Blood-Cell-Mimetic Nanoparticles with Peptide-Enhanced Tumor Penetration for Simultaneously Inhibiting Growth and Lung Metastasis of Breast Cancer

Limited blood circulation and poor tumor penetration are two main obstacles hampering the clinical translation of conventional nanosized drug delivery systems (NDDS). Here, red-blood-cell (RBC)-mimetic nanoparticles (NPs) with long circulation and peptide-enhanced tumor penetration for treating metastatic breast cancer are reported. The RBC-mimetic NPs are composed of a paclitaxel (PTX)-loaded polymeric core and a hydrophilic RBC vesicle shell. The RBC-mimetic NPs display dramatically elongated blood circulation with an elimination half time of 32.8 h, 5.8-fold higher than that of the parental polymeric NPs (i.e., 5.6 h). Moreover, the experimental results demonstrate that the tumor penetration ability of the RBC-mimetic NPs can be significantly improved by coadministrating with a tumor-penetrating peptide iRGD. Antitumor studies using a metastatic 4T1 breast tumor model show that RBC-mimetic NPs in combination with iRGD significantly inhibit over 90% of the tumor growth and suppress 95% of the lung metastasis, much more efficient than PTX-loaded polymer NP alone or the combination of polymer NPs and iRGD. The results reveal the importance of both long circulation and tumor penetration of nanosized drugs for efficient cancer therapy, which can provide a new insight for NDDS design.