Tumor-homing peptides as tools for targeted delivery of payloads to the placenta

Tumor-homing peptides have been exploited to create nanocarriers for targeted delivery of therapeutic agents to the placenta. The availability of therapeutics to treat pregnancy complications is severely lacking mainly because of the risk of causing harm to the fetus. As enhancement of placental growth and function can alleviate maternal symptoms and improve fetal growth in animal models, we have developed a method for targeted delivery of payloads to the placenta. We show that the tumor-homing peptide sequences CGKRK and iRGD bind selectively to the placental surface of humans and mice and do not interfere with normal development. Peptide-coated nanoparticles intravenously injected into pregnant mice accumulated within the mouse placenta, whereas control nanoparticles exhibited reduced binding and/or fetal transfer. We used targeted liposomes to efficiently deliver cargoes of carboxyfluorescein and insulin-like growth factor 2 to the mouse placenta; the latter significantly increased mean placental weight when administered to healthy animals and significantly improved fetal weight distribution in a well-characterized model of fetal growth restriction. These data provide proof of principle for targeted delivery of drugs to the placenta and provide a novel platform for the development of placenta-specific therapeutics.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Science Advances

• Publication date

  2016-05-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1126/sciadv.1600349PMID 27386551PMCID 4928982
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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