Development of Receptor Targeted Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Efficient Drug Delivery and Tumor Imaging.

The development of multifunctional nanoparticles that have dual capabilities of tumor imaging and delivering therapeutic agents into tumor cells holds great promises for novel approaches for tumor imaging and therapy. We have engineered urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) targeted biodegradable nanoparticles using a size uniform and amphiphilic polymer-coated magnetic iron oxide (IO) nanoparticle conjugated with the amino-terminal fragment (ATF) of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA), which is a high affinity natural ligand for uPAR. We further developed methods to encapsulate hydrophobic chemotherapeutic drugs into the polymer layer on the IO nanoparticles, making these targeted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensitive nanoparticles drug delivery vehicles.