A new nanostructured carrier design including oil to enhance the pharmaceutical properties of retinoid therapy and its therapeutic effects on chemo-resistant ovarian cancer.

All-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) is an appealing alternative drug for the cancers that have failed the conventional chemotherapy and become chemo-resistant and more tumorigenic. In this study, we specifically addressed two issues commonly associated with ATRA nanotherapeutics: (1) insufficient, unstable entrapment and uncontrolled release of the highly lipophilic ATRA and (2) lack of studies in therapeutically relevant chemo-resistant cancer cell models. A polymer-oil nanostructured carrier (PONC) composed of oil and PLGA was designed and studied in an ovarian cancer cell subline SKOV-3PR that could withstand up to 300 nM paclitaxel and expressed high levels of multidrug resistance transporter ABCB1 and tumorigenic marker CD133.