Near-Infrared Light Laser-Triggered Release of Doxorubicin and Sorafenib from Temperature-Sensitive Liposomes for Synergistic Therapy of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Chemotherapy of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is facing drug resistance, which leads to unsatisfactory therapeutic effect. Thus, a combination therapy using multiple drugs may overcome this challenge. The current study aims to realize a synergistic chemotherapy of HCC by using a near-infrared light (NIR) responsive nanocarrier to co-deliver the chemotherapeutic drug Doxorubicin (DOX) and molecular targeting agent Sorafenib (SF). The nanocarrier, which could effectively load DOX in its aqueous core while SF and IR-780 in its lipid bilayer, is fabricated from a temperature-sensitive liposome (TSL) modified with PF127. An efficient SF and DOX co-loading was achieved, and meanwhile the effective photothermal conversion of IR-780 under NIR laser may cause a disassembly of the liposome structure which may trigger a rapid drug release in tumor site, greatly boosting the synergetic chemotherapeutic effect. The NIR laser-triggered drug release and the synergistic anti-tumor effect were evaluated both in cell and animal experiments, which revealed that the PF127-modified TSL is a potent nanoplatform to improve the HCC treatment through co-delivering a drug combination.