Visualizing in vitro-in vivo correlation of miktoarm copolymer nanomicelles in cancer cellular uptake and trafficking

Abstract

In this study, a clear correlation between the in vitro and in vivo cellular uptake and trafficking was discovered by delivering miktoarm copolymer nanomicelles (MCNs) to cancer cells and tumor tissues. To monitor this process, two different FRET pairs, DiO and DiI, DiD and DiR, were loaded into MCNs to monitor the Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) efficiency. The change in FRET efficiency in vitro and in vivo demonstrated a similar sequence of events for the transport of MCNs: hyperbranched block PCL inserted into cytomembrane, while the loaded hydrophobic fluorescence probes were released and followed by time-dependent intracellular clustering within endocytic vesicles. Additionally, uptake of loaded fluorescence probes with successively increasing ratios of copolymers suggested that with the increase of mass ratio of copolymer to fluorescence probes, cellular uptake of probes significantly decreased. This result was also consistent with the uptake behavior in cancer tissues. Collectively, the interaction between MCNs and cellular membrane dictated the uptake and trafficking of core-loaded hydrophobic probes. This concept paves a new way to analyze in vitro-in vivo correlation of other nanocarriers for endocytosis mechanism studies as well as further novel copolymers design in biomedical applications.