Development of Improved Targeted Liposomal-Based Chemotherapeutics to Treat Metastatic Breast Cancer

Worldwide, breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer death amongst women [1, 2], and therefore improved chemotherapeutics are desperately needed. We have previously demonstrated selectivity of our novel targeted liposomal-based drug towards metastatic breast cancer cells. However, the necessary addition of PEG-2000 to the drug surface prior to in vivo use has previously shown to limit the overall drug incorporation into metastatic breast cancer cells and therefore presumably decrease the overall efficacy of the drug. Therefore, in this study we are currently working on the co-encapsulation of dual-drugs into our targeted formulation in order to recapture some of the presumed loss of overall drug efficacy attributed to the necessary pegylation prior to in vivo use. Specifically, we propose the co-encapsulation of the chemosenitizer drug dihydromyricetin (DMY) and the cytotoxic agent doxorubicin. DMY is used as a chemosensitizer because it is known to competitively bind sorcin [3], which is a protein known to be upregulated in metastatic breast cancer, and also known to bind to doxorubicin which limits its overall cytotoxic effect.