Confocal laser scanning microscopy further confirmed the potential of ethosomal system by showing high fluorescent intensity of Rhodamine 123 loaded formulation compared to hydroalcoholic solution

of probe across skin. The authors wish to thank Lipoid (Germany) for generously supplying soya phosphatidyl choline as gift sample. SBIC-Nikon Imaging Center at Biopolis, Singapore, provided facility to acquire confocal microscopy images for this study. Help of Dr Amit Misra, CDRI, India, is duly acknowledged regarding preparation of three dimensional surface plots. “
“The anthracycline anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox) is generally used in chemotherapy for the treatment of various tumors, including breast cancer, leukemia, and soft-tissue sarcoma. Various mechanisms explain its therapeutic effect [22]. These mechanisms include DNA intercalation, lipid peroxidation, and inhibition of topoisomerase II. However, the use of selleck inhibitor free Dox is rather limited due to its severe side effects, including

cardiotoxicity, hair loss, and nephrotoxicity [10], [20], [22] and [30]. Dox has been encapsulated in liposomes to reduce these problems associated with free Dox treatment [23]. Liposomes have been explored as a potential drug delivery carrier. Compared with the free drug, liposomal-encapsulated drugs typically exhibit a prolonged systemic circulation time and increased tumor localization by the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect [15]. In addition, the toxicity

of the liposomally encapsulated anticancer drugs could be diminished, as the drug cannot Wortmannin manufacturer exert its activity when encapsulated in liposomes during bloodstream circulation [11] and [31]. In 1995, the liposomal Dox formulations Doxil and Caelyx were approved by the FDA for the treatment of AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma and ovarian cancer. Although Doxil strongly reduced the cardiotoxicity of Dox in clinical trials, other side effects arose. Several patients suffered from mucositis and hand-and-foot syndrome due to the localization of the liposomes in skin capillaries [22]. Therefore, to develop safer and more selective liposomal formulations, many research groups have tried to develop tumor-targeting liposomes using transferrin, folic acid, RGD peptide, or antibodies as ligands [6], [14], [21], [27], [28] and [29]. The present study Anacetrapib focused on AG73, which is a 12-amino-acid synthetic peptide derived from the globular domain of the laminin α1 chain. AG73 peptide is a ligand for syndecans, one of the major heparan sulfate-containing transmembrane proteoglycans [3], [8] and [24]. Moreover, syndecan-2 is highly expressed in various cancer cell lines ([7], [26] and [32]. Therefore, we tried to develop Dox-encapsulating AG73 peptide-modified liposomes (AG73–Dox) as novel tumor-targeting liposomes to enhance the intracellular uptake of anticancer drugs and treatment efficacy.