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Browsing by Subject "paklitakseli"

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  • Aksela, Laura (2016)
    Even though cancer treatment modalities have improved during last decades, there is still lack of specific, efficient and curative treatments especially in case of advanced and metastatic cancers. One relatively new approach is to use oncolytic adenoviruses, which selectively infect and kill cancerous cells leaving healthy cells unharmed. These viruses have shown to be effective especially when administered intratumorally and in combination with chemotherapeutics. However this approach has multiple challenges like rapid clearance by antibody neutralization in systemic administration. Another challenge is the cell entry of oncolytic adenovirus, which is mainly mediated by the Coxsackie-Adenovirus receptor and this receptor is downregulated in various cancer cells. Rapid clearance and reduced cell entry thus lead to decreased amount of oncolytic adenovirus in target cells and decreased efficacy. In order to overcome these limitations, this study explored the possibility to use cancer cell derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) as drug delivery system for oncolytic adenovirus. Since oncolytic adenoviruses have shown to be effective especially in combination with chemotherapeutics, the ability of EVs to deliver both oncolytic adenoviruses and chemotherapeutic drug paclitaxel was studied. The aims of this study were to i) study whether oncolytic adenoviruses could be encapsulated inside EVs (EV-virus complex) and load this complex with paclitaxel (EV-virus-PTX complex), ii) discover whether the surface charge or size distribution of EV-virus and EV-virus-PTX complexes differs from the control EVs and iii) study the infectivity/efficacy of EV-virus and EV-virus-PTX complex in comparison to noncapsulated adenovirus in vitro. Since this is a novel approach, the literature review focused on the characteristics, advantages and challenges of oncolytic adenoviruses and EVs. In order to determine whether cancerous cell are able to encapsulate oncolytic adenoviruses inside EVs, A549 lung cancer and PC-3 prostate cancer cells were infected with oncolytic adenovirus and the formed EVs were isolated form conditioned media using differential centrifugation. Paclitaxel was loaded into these EV-virus complexes with incubation. EV-virus complexes were imaged using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) (i). The characteristics of these EV-virus and EV-virus-paclitaxel complexes were studied by determining the surface charge by electrophoretic light scattering and the size distribution by nanoparticle tracking analysis (ii). In order to determine the infectivity/efficacy of these complexes in autologous use, three in vitro level assays were performed (cell viability, immunocytochemistry and transduction assay) (iii). In addition confocal microscopy was used to observe the localization of EV-virus complexes inside the cell. These studies pointed out that both cell lines were able to encapsulate oncolytic adenovirus inside EVs, which was observed by TEM. The size distribution of these EV-virus and EV-virus-PTX complexes may support this observation and the size was in range 50-500 nm. In addition the determined surface charge was shown to be similar in EV-virus and EV-virus-PTX- complexes when compared to control EVs derived from noninfected cells - however more specific assays in order to characterize the surface properties of EV-virus complexes are needed. As a main finding, these EV-virus and EV-virus-PTX complexes were shown to significantly increase the efficacy of oncolytic adenovirus in comparison to free oncolytic adenovirus, paclitaxel and paclitaxel+virus combination in all three in vitro assays. In addition localization of the EV-virus complex was seen with confocal microscopy imaging. These results indicate that EVs may enhance the delivery of oncolytic adenovirus into cancerous cells. Using EVs as a drug delivery system for both oncolytic adenovirus and chemotherapeutic drug paclitaxel was shown to increase the efficacy of oncolytic adenovirus in comparison to free virus. This characteristic could potentially enhance the targeting ability to cancerous cells and thus lead to decreased amount of side-effects of healthy tissues especially in case of chemotherapeutics. These promising results of this novel approach are however preliminary due to relatively low number of repetitions (n~3) and more research is needed especially in order to characterize, purify and concentrate the EV-virus complexes.
  • Niemi, Liisa (2016)
    Extracellular vesicles are cell-derived vesicles which consist of two lipid layers. Extracellular vesicles involve in intercellular communication, maintaining of homeostase and development of pathophysiological states in human body. Extracellular vesicles are promising biomarkers and drug carriers in future. The aim of this study was to develop a method based on time resolved fluorescence microscopy and autologous extracellular vesicles labelled with environmentally sensitive fluorescent probes for studying the distribution of mitose-inhibitor paclitaxel in prostate cancer cells (PC-3) carried by extracellular vesicles. The efficacy of paclitaxel loaded extracellular vesicles was compared to synthetic liposomes. The two subpopulations of extracellular vesicles, exosome -and microvesicle-enriched, were isolated from the PC-3 cell media by differential ultracentrifugation. The size distribution and particle concentration of extracellular vesicles was determined by nanoparticle tracking analysis. DSPC-Cholesterol liposomes were prepared by reverse-phase evaporation method and the size distribution of the liposomes was determined by dynamic laser diffraction and nanoparticle tracking analysis. Paclitaxel was loaded into the liposomes in hydration phase and into the extracellular vesicles by incubating vesicles and paclitaxel. Unbound paclitaxel was removed from samples by ultracentrifugation. The the dose-dependent sytotoxicity of paclitaxel loaded extracellular vesicles and liposomes was evaluated with Alamar Blue viability assay. The release and distribution of paclitaxel from extracellular vesicles in living PC-3 cells was investigated by confocal microscopy and time-resolved fluorescence microscopy. The exosomes had approximately 50 nm smaller diameter than microvesicles and exosome particle concentrations were significantly higher compared to microvesicles. According to viability assays conducted with wide range of concentrations, paclitaxel loaded in microvesicles were slightly more effective than paclitaxel loaded in exosomes. The time-resolved fluorescence microscopy was useful method for investigating the release and distribution of extracellular vesicle bound paclitaxel, since we succesfully detected changes in Paclitaxel-OregonGreen fluorescence lifetime in different phases of the drug delivery process. With confocal microscopy we detected that paclitaxel loaded extracellular vesicles were already uptaken inside the cells after two hours of incubation and after few hours, paclitaxel was detected in microtubules of PC-3 cells and killed PC-3 cells. Extracellular vesicles may improve the accumulation of paclitaxel into tumor cells thus preventing the side-effects of paclitaxel. Nevertheless, PC-3 cell derived extracellular vesicles have ability to increase the PC-3 cell viability, which limits their potential use as drug carrier due to safety issues. In addition, extracellular vesicles characterization and isolation methods lack standardization and the isolation of exosomes and microvesicles is impossible due to this fact. Extracellular vesicles involvement in physiological and pathophysiological states should be investigated throughoutly and their safety as drug carriers should be examined both in animal and human.