Aim: Ability to deliver drugs into the cell nuclei can significantly increase the efficacy of cancer therapies, in particular in the case of multidrug-resistant cancer Results: Polymer nanocarriers based on amphiphilic thiooctadecyl-terminated poly-N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone were produced and loaded with a model hydrophobic drug, curcumin. Two commonly used loading approaches - emulsification and ultrasonic dispersion - were found to lead to two different size distributions with distinctively different biological effect. While nanocarriers produced via the emulsion method penetrated cells by dynamin-dependent endocytic mechanisms, sub-100 nm dispersion-produced nanocarriers were capable of crossing the membranes via biologically independent mechanisms.
Conclusion: This finding opens an intriguing possibility of intranuclear delivery by merely tailoring the size of polymeric carriers, thus promising a new approach for cancer therapies.
Keywords: PVP; atomic force microscopy; curcumin; fluorescence microscopy; intranuclear drug delivery; nanocarrier.