The immune-chemo-embolization effect of temperature sensitive gold nanomedicines against liver cancer

Although transcatheter arterial chemo-embolization(TACE)plays a key role on clinical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC),it was greatly limited by the poor synergistic effect between chemotherapeutics and physical embolization to tumor-feeding arteries.In the present work,a temperature sensitive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-b-methacrylic acid)(PNA),which was modified with gold nanoparticles(AuNP@PNA),was successfully used to encapsulate doxorubicin(DOX)by electrostatic binding with their carboxyl groups.The resultant gold nanomedicines(AuNP@PNA/DOX)exhibited temperature responsive sol-gel phase transition,favorable shear thinning effect and X-ray angiography.By in vivo evaluation of vascular embolization on VX2-tumor-bearing rabbits,AuNP@PNA/DOX exhibited far better antitumor efficacy than Lipiodol/DOX,on either tumor growth inhibition,proliferation,apoptosis,necrosis or anti-metastasis.Owing to sufficient embolization to tumor vascular networks,AuNP@PNA/DOX down-regulated the expression levels of HIF-1α,VEGF and MMP-9,and prompted more efficient activation on CD3+/CD8+T cells and the related cytokines,suggesting the synergistic effect between AuNP@PNA and DOX on the improvement of post-operative tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment.With their favorable pharmcokinetics and biocompatibility,AuNP@PNA/DOX is promising to be developed as a multi-functional artery-imaging/embolic agent with immune-chemo-embolization for enhancing TACE efficacy on HCC.