Engineered elastin-like polypeptides: An efficient platform for enhanced cancer treatment

Aiguo Jiang; Xinqiang Guan; Lianping He; Xingang Guan

doi:10.3389/fphar.2022.1113079

Engineered elastin-like polypeptides: An efficient platform for enhanced cancer treatment

Front Pharmacol. 2023 Jan 9:13:1113079. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2022.1113079. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Aiguo Jiang¹, Xinqiang Guan², Lianping He³, Xingang Guan^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Respiratory Medicine, Taizhou University Affiliated Wenling Hospital, Taizhou University, Taizhou, China.
² Department of Cardiac Surgery, Lanzhou University Second Hospital, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
³ Department of Basic Medicine, School of Medicine, Taizhou University, Taizhou, China.

Abstract

Drug delivery systems (DDSs) have recently gained widespread attention for improving drug loading and delivery efficiency in treating many cancers. Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) are synthetic peptides derived from a precursor of elastin (tropoelastin), reserving similar structural and physicochemical properties. ELPs have gained a variety of applications in tissue engineering and cancer therapy due to their excellent biocompatibility, complete degradability, temperature-responsive property, controllable sequence and length, and precisely tuned structure and function. ELPs-based drug delivery systems can improve the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of therapeutic reagents, leading to enhanced antitumor efficacy. In this review, we summarize the recent application of ELPs in cancer treatment, focusing on the delivery of functional peptides, therapeutic proteins, small molecule drugs, and photosensitizers.

Keywords: cancer therapy; drug delivery; elastin-like polypeptide; inverse transition cycling; nanoparticle.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LY23C100001), Start-up Research Grant at Taizhou University (T20220101026), Science and Technology Program of Taizhou City (22gya03), Science and Technology Program of The First People’s Hospital of Wenling (YXHZ005), Taizhou Anti-Cancer Association special research project (TACA-C06).