Mitochondria play a critical role in diverse cellular processes, such as energy production and apoptosis regulation. The mitochondria-targeted drug delivery is becoming a potential novel strategy for overcoming drug resistance in cancer therapy. Herein, we synthesize nature-inspired dopamine-derived polydopamine (PDA) nanoparticles. Using triphenylphosphonium (TPP) as the mitochondrial penetration molecule to improve the target efficiency, we synthesize poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-modified PDA (PDA-PEG) and TPP-functionalized PEG-modified PDA (PDA-PEG-TPP) nanoparticles. Then anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded on PDA-PEG and PDA-PEG-TPP (PDA-PEG-DOX and PDA-PEG-TPP-DOX) nanoparticles, which are apt to deliver DOX to cell nuclei and mitochondria, respectively. To mimic the repeated anticancer drug treatment in clinical cases, we repeatedly treated the MDA-MD-231 cancer cells for a long time using DOX-loaded nanoparticles and find that the mitochondria targeting PDA-PEG-TPP-DOX has higher potential to overcome the drug resistance than the regular delivery nanoparticles PDA-PEG-DOX. These results indicate the promising potential of applying PDA-PEG-TPP-DOX nanoparticles in mitochondria-targeted drug delivery to overcome the drug resistance in long-time anticancer chemotherapy.
Keywords: doxorubicin; drug resistance; mitochondria-targeted; polydopamine nanoparticles; triphenylphosphonium (TPP).