Sex-Specific Silica Nanoparticle Protein Corona Compositions Exposed to Male and Female BALB/c Mice Plasmas

Targeting tumor microenvironment with RGD-functionalized nanoparticles for precision cancer therapy

The need for precision therapies arises from the complexities associated with high-risk types of cancer, due to their aggressiveness and resistance to treatment. These diseases represent a global issue that requires transversal strategies involving cooperation among oncology specialists and experts from related fields, including nanomedicine. Nanoparticle-mediated active targeting of tumors has proven to be a revolutionary approach to address the most challenging neoplasms by overcoming the poor permeation at tumor site of untargeted, and nowadays questioned, strategies that rely solely on Enhanced Permeability and Retention (EPR) effects. The decoration of nanoparticles with Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptides, which selectively target integrins on the cell membrane, marks a turning point in tumor microenvironment (TME) targeted strategies, enabling precision and efficiency in the delivery of chemotherapeutics. This review delves into the intricacies of the TME's features and targetable components (i.e. integrins), and the development of RGDs for nanoparticles' functionalization for active TME targeting. It provides a translational perspective on the integration of RGD-functionalized nanoparticles in oncology, highlighting their potential to overcome current therapeutic challenges, particularly in precision medicine. The current landscape of targeted nanomedicines in the clinic, and the development of RGD-nanomedicine for pediatric cancers are also discussed.

The role of patient-specific variables in protein corona formation and therapeutic efficacy in nanomedicine

Despite their potential, the adoption of nanotechnology in therapeutics remains limited, with only around eighty nanomedicines approved in the past 30 years. This disparity is partly due to the "one-size-fits-all" approach in medical design, which often overlooks patient-specific variables such as biological sex, genetic ancestry, disease state, environment, and age that influence nanoparticle behavior. Nanoparticles (NPs) must be transported through systemic, microenvironmental, and cellular barriers that vary across heterogeneous patient populations. Key patient-dependent properties impacting NP delivery include blood flow rates, body fat distribution, reproductive organ vascularization, hormone and protein levels, immune responses, and chromosomal differences. Understanding these variables is crucial for developing effective, patient-specific nanotechnologies. The formation of a protein corona around NPs upon exposure to biological fluids significantly alters NP properties, affecting biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, cytotoxicity, and organ targeting. The dynamics of the protein corona, such as time-dependent composition and formation of soft and hard coronas, depend on NP characteristics and patient-specific serum components. This review highlights the importance of understanding protein corona formation across different patient backgrounds and its implications for NP design, including sex, ancestry, age, environment, and disease state. By exploring these variables, we aim to advance the development of personalized nanomedicine, improving therapeutic efficacy and patient outcomes.

Small molecule modulation of protein corona for deep plasma proteome profiling

The protein corona formed on nanoparticles (NPs) has potential as a valuable diagnostic tool for improving plasma proteome coverage. Here, we show that spiking small molecules, including metabolites, lipids, vitamins, and nutrients into plasma can induce diverse protein corona patterns on otherwise identical NPs, significantly enhancing the depth of plasma proteome profiling. The protein coronas on polystyrene NPs when exposed to plasma treated with an array of small molecules allows for the detection of 1793 proteins marking an 8.25-fold increase in the number of quantified proteins compared to plasma alone (218 proteins) and a 2.63-fold increase relative to the untreated protein corona (681 proteins). Furthermore, we discovered that adding 1000 µg/ml phosphatidylcholine could singularly enable the detection of 897 proteins. At this specific concentration, phosphatidylcholine selectively depletes the four most abundant plasma proteins, including albumin, thus reducing the dynamic range of plasma proteome and enabling the detection of proteins with lower abundance. Employing an optimized data-independent acquisition approach, the inclusion of phosphatidylcholine leads to the detection of 1436 proteins in a single plasma sample. Our molecular dynamics results reveal that phosphatidylcholine interacts with albumin via hydrophobic interactions, H-bonds, and water bridges. The addition of phosphatidylcholine also enables the detection of 337 additional proteoforms compared to untreated protein corona using a top-down proteomics approach. Given the critical role of plasma proteomics in biomarker discovery and disease monitoring, we anticipate the widespread adoption of this methodology for the identification and clinical translation of biomarkers.

Protein Corona of Nanoparticles: Isolation and Analysis

Nanoparticles entering biological systems or fluids inevitably adsorb biomolecules, such as protein, on their surfaces, forming a protein corona. Ensuing, the protein corona endows nanoparticles with a new biological identity and impacts the interaction between the nanoparticles and biological systems. Hence, the development of reliable techniques for protein corona isolation and analysis is key for understanding the biological behaviors of nanoparticles. First, this review systematically outlines the approach for isolating the protein corona, including centrifugation, magnetic separation, size exclusion chromatography, flow-field-flow fractionation, and other emerging methods. Next, we review the qualitative and quantitative characterization methods of the protein corona. Finally, we underscore the necessary steps to advance the efficiency and fidelity of protein corona isolation and characterization on nanoparticle surfaces. We anticipate that these insights into protein corona isolation and characterization methodologies will profoundly influence the development of technologies aimed at elucidating bionano interactions and the role of protein corona in various biomedical applications.

Impact of Nanomedicine in Women's Metastatic Breast Cancer

Metastatic breast cancer is responsible for 90% of mortalities among women suffering from various types of breast cancers. Traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy can cause significant side effects and may not be effective in many cases. However, recent advances in nanomedicine have shown great promise in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. For example, nanomedicine demonstrated robust capacity in detection of metastatic cancers at early stages (i.e., before the metastatic cells leave the initial tumor site), which gives clinicians a timely option to change their treatment process (for example, instead of endocrine therapy they may use chemotherapy). Here recent advances in nanomedicine technology in the identification and treatment of metastatic breast cancers are reviewed.

Sex Influences the Safety and Therapeutic Efficacy of Cardiac Nanomedicine Technologies

Nanomedicine technologies are being developed for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the leading cause of death worldwide. Before delving into the nuances of cardiac nanomedicine, it is essential to comprehend the fundamental sex-specific differences in cardiovascular health. Traditionally, CVDs have been more prevalent in males, but it is increasingly evident that females also face significant risks, albeit with distinct characteristics. Females tend to develop CVDs at a later age, exhibit different clinical symptoms, and often experience worse outcomes compared to males. These differences indicate the need for sex-specific approaches in cardiac nanomedicine. This Perspective discusses the importance of considering sex in the safety and therapeutic efficacy of nanomedicine approaches for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of CVD.

Physiological Barriers and Strategies of Lipid-Based Nanoparticles for Nucleic Acid Drug Delivery

Lipid-based nanoparticles (LBNPs) are currently the most promising vehicles for nucleic acid drug (NAD) delivery. Although their clinical applications have achieved success, the NAD delivery efficiency and safety are still unsatisfactory, which are, to a large extent, due to the existence of multi-level physiological barriers in vivo. It is important to elucidate the interactions between these barriers and LBNPs, which will guide more rational design of efficient NAD vehicles with low adverse effects and facilitate broader applications of nucleic acid therapeutics. This review describes the obstacles and challenges of biological barriers to NAD delivery at systemic, organ, sub-organ, cellular, and subcellular levels. The strategies to overcome these barriers are comprehensively reviewed, mainly including physically/chemically engineering LBNPs and directly modifying physiological barriers by auxiliary treatments. Then the potentials and challenges for successful translation of these preclinical studies into the clinic are discussed. In the end, a forward look at the strategies on manipulating protein corona (PC) is addressed, which may pull off the trick of overcoming those physiological barriers and significantly improve the efficacy and safety of LBNP-based NADs delivery.

Improved Methodology for Evaluating Nanomedicine Antibacterial Properties in Biological Fluids

Accurate assessment of nanomedicines' antibacterial properties is pivotal for their effective use in both in vitro and in vivo settings. Conventional antibacterial activity assessment methods, involving bacterial coculture with compounds on agar plates, may not fully suit nanomedicines due to their susceptibility to alterations in physicochemical properties induced by biological fluids. Furthermore, these biological fluids might even enhance the bacterial growth. This study introduces a novel, rigorous, and reproducible methodology for evaluating nanomedicine antibacterial properties using cell culture media (i.e., DMEM-FBS10%). To assess the antibacterial activity of the nanoparticles in cell culture media, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) were chosen as the model nanomedicine due to their clinical significance. A comparative analysis between the traditional and our proposed methods yielded contrasting outcomes, shedding light on the significant impact of biological fluids on nanoparticle antibacterial activities. While the conventional approach suggested the antibacterial effectiveness of SPIONs against Staphylococcus aureus, our innovative method unveiled a substantial increase in bacterial growth in the presence of biological fluids. More specifically, we found a significant increase in bacterial growth when exposed to bare SPIONs at various concentrations, while the formation of a protein corona on SPION surfaces could markedly reduce the observed bacterial growth compared to the control group. These findings underscore the necessity for more refined evaluation techniques that can better replicate the in vivo environment when studying the nanomedicine's antibacterial capabilities.

The Role of Biological Sex in Pre-Clinical (Mouse) mRNA Vaccine Studies

In this study, we consider the influence of biological sex-specific immune responses on the assessment of mRNA vaccines in pre-clinical murine studies. Recognising the established disparities in immune function attributed to genetic and hormonal differences between individuals of different biological sexes, we compared the mRNA expression and immune responses in mice of both biological sexes after intramuscular injection with mRNA incorporated within lipid nanoparticles. Regarding mRNA expression, no significant difference in protein (luciferase) expression at the injection site was observed between female and male mice following intramuscular administration; however, we found that female BALB/c mice exhibit significantly greater total IgG responses across the concentration range of mRNA lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) in comparison to their male counterparts. This study not only contributes to the scientific understanding of mRNA vaccine evaluation but also emphasizes the importance of considering biological sex in vaccine study designs during pre-clinical evaluation in murine studies.

Sex-specific considerations in nanomedicine: highlighting the impact of the menstrual cycle on drug development

Tweetable abstract The female menstrual cycle is one of the most overlooked sex-specific factors in drug distribution and response. Unlocking the potential of nanomedicine demands a fundamental understanding of the impact biological sex has on drug distribution, efficacy and adverse effects.

Acute brain injury and nanomedicine: sex as a biological variable

Sex as a biological variable has been recognized for decades to be a critical aspect of the drug development process, as differences in drug pharmacology and toxicity in female versus male subjects can drive the success or failure of new therapeutics. These concepts in development of traditional drug systems have only recently begun to be applied for advancing nanomedicine systems that are designed for drug delivery or imaging in the central nervous system (CNS). This review provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of two fields of research - nanomedicine and acute brain injury-centering on sex as a biological variable. We highlight areas of each field that provide foundational understanding of sex as a biological variable in nanomedicine, brain development, immune response, and pathophysiology of traumatic brain injury and stroke. We describe current knowledge on female versus male physiology as well as a growing number of empirical reports that directly address sex as a biological variable in these contexts. In sum, the data make clear two key observations. First, the manner in which sex affects nanomedicine distribution, toxicity, or efficacy is important, complex, and depends on the specific nanoparticle system under considerations; second, although field knowledge is accumulating to enable us to understand sex as a biological variable in the fields of nanomedicine and acute brain injury, there are critical gaps in knowledge that will need to be addressed. We anticipate that understanding sex as a biological variable in the development of nanomedicine systems to treat acute CNS injury will be an important determinant of their success.