Multifunctional bovine serum albumin-based nanocarriers with endosomal escaping and NIR light-controlled release to overcome multidrug resistance of breast cancer cells

The development of nanocarrier-based drug delivery systems is essential to fight against multidrug-resistant (MDR) breast cancer. Herein, we firstly conjugated bovine serum albumin (BSA) with triphenylphosphonium (TPP), and then encapsulated model anticancer drug (doxorubicin, DOX) and photothermal reagent (IR820) via one-pot synthesis of glutathione reduction, to obtain BSA-TPP@(IR820/DOX) nanocomposites. Compared to BSA@(IR820/DOX) with no TPP modifications as a control, BSA-TPP@(IR820/DOX) nanocomposites could be internalized by MDR breast cancer cells with higher efficiency, and rapidly escape from the intracellular endo-/lysosomes into cytoplasms. Moreover, they also had a good behavior of dual pH/NIR light-controlled release of DOX molecules. On this basis, BSA-TPP@(IR820/DOX) nanocomposites exhibited an enhanced inhibitive activity against the proliferation of MDR breast cancer cells via combined chemo-photothermal therapy. Considering the excellent biosafty of BSA, we suggested that this delivery nanosystem developed here has a great promise to overcome MDR of breast cancer in future clinic.