Tumor cell-derived extracellular vesicles for breast cancer specific delivery of therapeutic P53

Breast cancer has consistently had the highest incidence among women in the world. Tumor cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EV) have been leveraged as drug carriers for cancer treatment. Researchers at South China Normal University developed an efficient theranostic platform for breast cancer-specific delivery of lipophilic triphenylphosphonium (TPP)-modified therapeutic recombinant P53 proteins (TPP/P53) by breast cancer cell-derived EVs. The researchers observed that the EVs were routinely captured by their patent cells, so when, TPP/P53 was loaded into the EVs (TPP/P53@EVs), TPP/P53 was targeted to the mitochondria of breast cancer cells, where it caused signal amplification and induced the death of breast cancer cells.

These findings demonstrate that the TPP/P53@EVs showed good tumor-targeting capability and efficiently destroyed the tumor tissues without any obvious toxicity in vivo. Therefore, our TPP/P53@EVs might provide a “drug-free” strategy for future applications in breast cancer therapy.