Lipopolysaccharide-coated CuS nanoparticles promoted anti-cancer and anti-metastatic effect by immuno-photothermal therapy

// Bian Jang 1, 2, 3, 4, * , Li Xu 1, * , Madhappan S. Moorthy 2 , Wei Zhang 1 , Ling Zeng 1 , Mingyeong Kang 5 , Minseok Kwak 2, 5 , Junghwan Oh 2, 3, 4 and Jun-O Jin 1 1 Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China 2 Marine-Integrated Bionics Research Center, Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering and Center for Marine-Integrated Biomedical Technology (BK21 Plus), Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea 4 Interdisciplinary Program of Biomedical Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea 5 Department of Chemistry, Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Junghwan Oh, email: jungoh@pknu.ac.kr Jun-O Jin, email: junojin1@gmail.com Keywords: lipopolysaccharide; copper sulfide nanoparticles; photothermal therapy; immunotherapy; anti-tumor Received: August 21, 2017     Accepted: September 22, 2017     Published: November 06, 2017 ABSTRACT To meet the ultimate goal of cancer therapy, which is treating not only the primary tumor but also preventing metastatic cancer, the concept of combining immunotherapy with photothermal therapy (PTT) is gaining great interest. Here, we studied the new material, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) coated copper sulfide nanoparticles (LPS-CuS), for the immuno-photothermal therapy. We evaluated the effect of LPS-CuS for induction of apoptosis of CT26 cells and activation of dendritic cells. Moreover, the LPS-CuS and laser irradiation was examined anti-metastasis effect by liver metastasis model mouse in vivo . Through PTT, LPS-CuS induced elimination of CT26 tumor in BALB/c mice, which produced cancer antigens. In addition, released LPS and cancer antigen by PTT promoted dendritic cell activation in tumor draining lymph node (drLN), and consequently, enhanced the tumor antigen-specific immune responses. Finally, the primary tumor cured mice by LPS-CuS-mediated PTT completely resisted secondary tumor injection in the spleen and also prevented liver metastasis. Our results demonstrated the potential usage of LPS-CuS for the immuno-photothermal therapy against various types of cancer by showing the clear elimination of primary colon carcinoma with complete prevention of spleen and liver metastasis.