TARGETED DELIVERY OF VITAMIN E TPGS BASED NANOMEDICINE FOR TREATMENT OF TRIPLE NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER

Abstract

We have developed a system of cetuximab-conjugated micelles of vitamin E TPGS for the targeted delivery of docetaxel as a model anticancer drug for treatment of the triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), which expresses none of hormone progesterone receptor (PR), estrogen receptor (ER) and epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) and is thus less amenable to treatment than the positive breast cancer. The micelles have been shown to possess a favourable particle size, drug loading, drug encapsulation efficiency and drug release profile. Their surface morphology, surface charge and surface chemistry have also been characterised.TNBC cells were employed to assessin vitro cellular uptake and cytotoxicity of the formulated micellar system. We further studied the efficacy of our micellar system in TNBC xenograft models and explored the effect of the micelles on post-treatment tumours in order to elucidate the mechanism underlying the nanomedicine treatment in oncology.This study has demonstrated the successful delivery of docetaxel and the resultant improvement in therapeutic effects on the EGFR-overexpressing TNBC cells by the targeted micelles. In addition, both in vivo and ex vivo data corroborate that our micellar formulation effectively targeted and inhibited the EGFR-overexpressing tumour.