Peptide-functionalized delivery vehicles for enhanced cancer therapy.

Functional peptides that are made up of diverse endogenous amino acids with a specific sequence and length have shown various functionalities including specific biological recognition and cell penetrating ability for biomedical applications. Therefore, incorporation of peptide with a certain tailor-made amino acid sequence to the delivery systems has endowed the resulting delivery vehicles with specific functions, which provided a robust strategy for enhancing the therapeutic efficiency for malignant diseases. To make a timely review on this hot subject of research, we summarized the recent progress on peptide-functionalized delivery vehicles for enhanced cancer therapy with an emphasis on the chemistry adopted for the conjugation of peptide compared to most of the published reviews with a focus on the property and performance of the peptide-functionalized delivery systems.

Delivery of Liver-Specific miRNA-122 Using a Targeted Macromolecular Prodrug toward Synergistic Therapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) poses a great threat to human health. The elegant combination of gene therapy and chemotherapy by nanocarriers has been repeatedly highlighted to realize enhanced therapeutic efficacy relative to monotreatment. However, the leading strategy to achieve the efficient codelivery of the gene and drug remains the electrostatic condensation with the nucleic acid and the hydrophobic encapsulation of drug molecules by the nanocarriers, which suffers substantially from premature drug leakage during circulation and severe off-target-associated side effects.

Facile fabrication of a novel hybrid nanoparticles by self-assembling based on pectin-doxorubicin conjugates for hepatocellular carcinoma therapy.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the greatest public health problems worldwide, and chemotherapy remains the major approach for the HCC treatment. Doxorubicin (DOX) is one of the anthracycline antibiotics but its clinical use is limited due to its severe cardiotoxicity. In this study, novel hybrid nanoparticles by self-assembling based on pectin-doxorubicin conjugates (PDC-NPs) were fabricated for HCC treatment.