On July 30, 2021, A research paper entitled "Designer exosomes enabling tumor targeted efficient chemo/gene/photothermal therapy" was published in the journal "Biomaterials" by the team of Professor Bi-Feng Liu from the college of Life Sciences of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
In this work, Liu group developed proposed a new technology of functionalized exosomes to achieve combined gene/chemistry/photothermal therapy for targeting tumors. This technology consists of exosomes loaded with internalized doxorubicin (DOX, a model cancer drug) and coated with magnetic nanoparticles conjugated with molecular beacons capable of targeting miR-21 for responsive molecular imaging. The coated magnetic nanoparticle enables enrichment of the exosomes at the tumor site by external magnetic field guidance. After the exosomes are gathered at the tumor site, the application of near-infrared radiation (NIR) induces localized hyperthermia and triggers the release of cargoes loaded inside the exosome. The released molecular beacon can target the miR-21 for both imaging and gene silencing. Meanwhile, the released doxorubicin serves to kill the cancer cells. About 91.04 % of cancer cells are killed after treatment with Exo-DOX-Fe3O4@PDA-MB under NIR. The ability of the exosome-based method for cancer therapy has been demonstrated by animal models, in which the tumor size is reduced dramatically by 97.57 % with a magnetic field-guided tumor-targeted chemo/gene/photothermal approach. Thus, we expected this designer exosome-mediated multi-mode therapy to be a promising platform for the next-generation precision cancer nanomedicines.
Dr. Jie Wang, Dr. Peng Chen, and Dr. Yue Dong from Huazhong University of Science and Technology are co-first authors of the paper, and Prof. Bi-Feng Liu is the corresponding author of the paper. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Program.
Recently, Liu group has achieved a series of important advances in the field of exosome isolation, detection and tumor targeting therapy research, including: Nano Today 37 (2021): 101066.; Advanced Functional Materials 28, no. 18 (2018): 1707360.; ACS applied materials & interfaces 9, no. 33 (2017): 27441-27452.; Nanoscale 9, no. 40 (2017): 15598-15605.; Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical 333 (2021): 129559.
Paper link:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961221004129
