Utilizing glutathione-triggered nanoparticles to enhance chemotherapy of lung cancer by reprograming the tumor microenvironment

In the present study, we have developed the robust nanoparticles (MGC-GNP/PTX), which are TAMs and tumor cells-dual recognizable, for targeting cancer therapy. Of great importance, the developed nano-platforms are glutathione (GSH)-activable, which means it remains structure intact under normal physiological condition and can be disrupted when exposed to certain concentration of GSH. As demonstrated by the drug release assay in vitro, MGC-GNP/PTX exhibited an excellent structure stability under the normal condition with only 10% of cumulative drug release at 72 h. However, after increasing the concentration of GSH to 1 mM or 10 mM, the release of PTX from the nanoparticles was significantly accelerated and approximately 35% or 95% of drugs was released. Cellular experiments and in vivo tumor targeting assay displayed that the developed nanoparticles have a super capacity of tumor cells and TAMs-dual targeting drug delivery, which resulted in much stronger cytotoxicity when compared to the unmodified ones. Finally, the pharmacodynamic evaluation indicated that the mice treated with MGC-GNP/PTX displayed the strongest tumor suppression ability versus other groups. More importantly, the treatment of MGC-GNP/PTX did not significantly influence the body weight and pathological of the mice, indicated that the prepared nanoparticle system had a satisfactory bio-safety for targeting tumor drug delivery.