Protein corona in drug delivery for multimodal cancer therapy in vivo

Ce6 into tumor-bearing NCr nude mice resulted in their tumor accumulation reaching a peak concentration of 560.3 μg Au per kg tissue (0.0752% dose) within 6 h post-injection. Subsequent localized laser irradiation of the xenograft tumor resulted in a significant tumor temperature increase of 16.85 °C within 20 min. Combined with the simultaneous reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by Ce6 for PDT, complete tumor regression was achieved within 19 days with no tumor regrowth up to 31 days. Similar to other NPs, significant gold accumulation was observed in the major reticuloendothelial system (RES) organs, particularly the liver and spleen, although no acute toxicity was observed histologically 31 days post-treatment. Our results demonstrated for the first time an in vivo application of the protein corona around NPs in the loading and delivery of drugs in small animals. The ease of drug loading and the biocompatibility of the endogenous serum-based protein corona could make it useful for drug delivery and therapeutic applications instead of merely being considered as a biological artefact to be eliminated.