Abstract
An ongoing need for new cancer therapeutics exists, especially ones that specifically home and target triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) tumors. Because TNBC does not express estrogen, progesterone, or Her2/Neu receptors, another target must be used for advanced drug delivery strategies. Here, we engineered a nanodrug delivery system consisting of silver-coated gold nanorods targeting EpCAM and loaded with doxorubicin. This novel nanodrug system, EpCAM-AuNR/Ag/Dox, was found to specifically target EpCAM-expressing tumor cells compared to low EpCAM-expressing tumors. Namely, the system had an inhibiting cell viability effective dose (ED50) of 3μM on 4T1 cells and an ED50 of 110μM for MDA-MD-231 cells. Flow cytometry indicated that 4T1 cells, on average, express two orders of magnitude more EpCAM than MDA-MD-231 cells, which correlates with our ED50 findings. Moreover, due to its thin silver coating, the AuNR/Ag allowed for detection by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and photoacoustics (PA). Analysis by both imaging detection techniques showed that the targeted nanodrug system was taken up by EpCAM-expressing cells and tumors at significantly higher rates than untargeted nanoparticles (p<0.05). In conclusion, our novel approach establishes a plasmonically-active nanodrug therapeutic system for TNBC and, potentially, a delivery system with improved multimodal imaging capability for other clinically approved chemotherapeutics with dose-limiting toxicities, such as platinum-based or taxane-based therapies.
Citation Format: Samir V. Jenkins, Zeid A. Nima, Kieng B. Vang, Dmitry Nedosekin, Vladimir P. Zharov, Robert J. Griffin, Alexandru S. Biris, Ruud P. Dings. Breast cancer targeting by theranostic gold nanorods [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-312. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-LB-312
