Ferritin/Nanozyme: Novel Properties and Their Application in Tumor Theranostics

Kelong Fan 1*, Xiyun Yan 1, 2*

 

1 Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Beijing, 100101, P. R. China.

2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.

 

* Corresponding authors. E-mail: fankelong@ibp.ac.cn; yanxy@ibp.ac.cn

 

Presented: 2018 Chinese Conference on Oncology. Shenyang, China, Aug. 17-19, 2018; Published: Oct. 18, 2018

 

Citation: Kelong Fan, Xiyun Yan, Ferritin/Nanozyme: Novel Properties and Their Application in Tumor Theranostics. Nano Biomed. Eng., 2018, Special Issue: 315.

 

Abstract

Since the first finding that Fe3O4 nanoparticles with intrinsic peroxidase-like activity, nanozyme is becoming a rapidly emerging field between biology and nanotechnology. Recently, we paid our attention to study the mechanisms and improvements of iron oxide nanozyme (IONzyme) and develop applications in tumor theranostics. Employing human H-ferritin (HFn) as a template, we biomimetically synthesized a magnetoferritin (M-HFn) nanoparticle, which endow the IONzyme with intrinsic tumor targeting property. Based on M-HFn, we developed a novel tumor diagnosis method. We further used HFn as a nanocarrier, which specifically delivers high doses of Dox to kill tumor cells, while exhibiting excellent safety profiles. Importantly, we show that a HFn nanocarrier both successfully crosses the BBB and kills glioma tumor cells. Its principle point of entry is the HFn receptor (transferrin receptor 1), which is overexpressed in both BBB endothelial cells (ECs) and glioma cells. We found that HFn enters and exits the BBB via the endosome compartment. In contrast, upon specifically targeting and entering glioma cells, nearly all of the HFn accumulated in the lysosomal compartment, resulting in the killing of glioma tumor cells, with no HFn accumulation in the surrounding healthy brain tissue. Thus, HFn is an ideal nanocarrier for glioma therapy and possesses the potential to serve as a therapeutic approach against a broad range of central nervous system diseases. Recently, we report a novel strategy to coordinate nanozymes to target tumor cells and selectively perform their activity to destruct in vivo tumors. We introduced HFn to guide nanozymes to efficiently transfer into lysosomes and boost ROS generation in a tumor-specific manner, resulting in significant tumor regression in human tumor xenograft mice model. Thus, ferritinylation is a novel strategy to render nanozymes to target tumor in vivo. This work provides a new strategy to coordinate nanozymes for in vivo tumor catalytic therapy.

 

Keywords: Nanozymes; Ferritin nanocarrier; Tumor diagnosis; Tumor catalytic therapy; BBB and glioma

 

Copyright© Kelong Fan, Xiyun Yan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

 

PDF

 

Nano Biomedicine and Engineering.

Copyright © Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press