Thermosensitive Exosome-Liposome Hybrid Nanoparticle-Mediated Chemoimmunotherapy for Improved Treatment of Metastatic Peritoneal Cancer

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2020 Jul 29;7(18):2000515. doi: 10.1002/advs.202000515. eCollection 2020 Sep.

Abstract

Metastatic peritoneal carcinoma (mPC) is a deadly disease without effective treatment. To improve treatment of this disease, a recently developed hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) has emerged as the standard of care. However, the efficacy of this approach is limited by inefficient drug penetration and rapidly developed drug resistance. Herein, a nanotechnology approach is reported that is designed to improve drug delivery to mPC and to augment the efficacy of HIPEC through delivery of chemoimmunotherapy. First, the drug delivery efficiency of HIPEC is determined and it is found that chemotherapy agents cannot be efficiently delivered to large tumors nodules. To overcome the delivery hurdle, genetically engineered exosomes-thermosensitive liposomes hybrid NPs, or gETL NPs, are then synthesized, and it is demonstrated that the NPs after intravenous administration efficiently penetrates into mPC tumors and releases payloads at the hypothermia condition of HIPEC. Last, it is shown that, when granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and docetaxel are co-delivered, gETL NPs effectively inhibit tumor development and the efficacy is enhanced when HIPEC is co-administered. The study provides a strategy to improve drug delivery to mPCs and offers a promising approach to improve treatment of the disease through combination of locoregional delivery of HIPEC and systemic delivery of chemoimmunotherapy via gETL NPs.

Keywords: chemoimmunotherapy; exosomes; hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy; metastatic peritoneal carcinoma; thermosensitive liposomes.