Identification of peptide coatings that enhance diffusive transport of nanoparticles through the tumor microenvironment

Rashmi Mohanty; Xinquan Liu; Jae You Kim; Xiujuan Peng; Sahil Bhandari; Jasmim Leal; Dhivya Arasappan; Dennis C. Wylie; Tony Dong; Debadyuti Ghosh

Nanoparticles are promising systems to deliver large quantities of therapeutic cargo while minimizing off-target toxicity in non-tumor tissues (reviewed in 16 ), and engineering these particles for effective transport through the tumor microenvironment is critical towards successful drug delivery. The physicochemical properties of nanoparticles, such as shape, size, and surface chemistry, govern their penetration into tumors, and optimization of these properties can enhance their transport for improved accumulation and retention. The tumor ECM acts as a steric barrier that can filter away particles based on size 17, 18 . To address this problem, extensive efforts have been made to synthesize nanoparticles with smaller diameters 10, [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] or different non-spherical shapes 19, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 to diffuse through the ECM mesh and improve penetration in select tumor types.