Introduction: To enhance photothermal treatment (PTT) efficiency, a delivery method that uses cell vector for nanoparticles (NPs) delivery has drawn attention and studied widely in recent years.
Objectives: In this study, we demonstrated the feasibility of M1 activated macrophage as a live vector for delivering NPs and investigated the effect of NPs loaded M1 stimulated by Lipopolysaccharide on PTT efficiency in vivo.
Methods: M1 was used as a live vector for delivering NPs and further to investigate the effect of NPs loaded M1 on PTT efficiency. Non-activated macrophage (MФ) was stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) into M1 and assessed for tumor cell phagocytic capacity towards NPs.
Results: We found M1 exhibited a 20-fold higher uptake capacity of NPs per cell volume and 2.9-fold more active infiltration into the tumor site, compared with non-activated macrophage MФ. We injected M1 cells peritumorally and observed that these cells penetrated into the tumor mass within 12 h. Then, we conducted PTT using irradiation of a near-infrared laser for 1 min at 1 W/cm2. As a result, we confirmed that using M1 as an active live vector led to a more rapid reduction in tumor size within 1 day indicating that the efficacy of PTT with NPs-loaded M1 is higher than that with NPs-loaded MФ.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated the potential role of M1 as a live vector for enhancing the feasibility of PTT in cancer treatment.
Keywords: Cancer therapy; Live cell vector; M1 macrophage; Medical optics and biotechnology; Photothermal effect; Photothermal treatment.
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Cairo University.