Tumor-tropic endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) loaded with near-infrared sensitive Au nanoparticles: A “cellular stove” approach to the photoablation of melanoma

// Giancarlo Margheri 1 , Angela Zoppi 2, 3 , Roberto Olmi 4 , Silvana Trigari 1 , Rita Traversi 5 , Mirko Severi 5 , Daniele Bani 6 , Francesca Bianchini 7 , Eugenio Torre 7 , Francesca Margheri 7 , Anastasia Chilla 7 , Alessio Biagioni 7 , Lido Calorini 7, 8 , Anna Laurenzana 7 , Gabriella Fibbi 7 , Mario Del Rosso 7, 8 1 Institute for Complex Systems, National Research Council, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy 2 Department of Physics “Enrico Fermi”, University of Pisa, Italy 3 Present address: Plasmatech, Department of Physics “Enrico Fermi”, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy 4 Institute of Applied Physics “Nello Carrara”, National Research Council, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy 5 Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff”, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy 6 Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy 7 Department of Experimental and Clinical Biomedical Science, University of Florence, Florence, Italy 8 Excellence Center for Research, Transfer and High Education ‘Study at Molecular and Clinical Level of Chronic, Inflammatory, Degenerative and Neoplastic Disorders for the Development on Novel Therapies’, Florence, Italy Correspondence to: Anna Laurenzana, email: anna.laurenzana@unifi.it Gabriella Fibbi, email: fibbi@unifi.it Keywords: gold nanoparticles, endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs), chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 4 (CXCR4), melanoma, tumor thermoablation Received: January 13, 2016      Accepted: May 08, 2016      Published: May 20, 2016 ABSTRACT In the photothermal treatments (PTs) of tumor, the localization of a high number of near-infrared (NIR) absorbing gold nanoparticles in the tumor mass is still a challenging issue. Here, we propose a promising strategy to deliver therapeutic chitosan-coated gold nanoparticles to tumor cells as hidden cargo of Endothelial Colony Forming Cells (ECFCs) endowed with an innate tumor-tropism. Remarkably, ECFC gold enrichement doesn’t affect cell viability and preserves the endothelial lineage characteristics such as capillary morphogenesis and cell migration. We demonstrate that heavily Au-doped ECFCs are able to efficiently warm up the tumor environment, and kill the cancer cells via hyperthermic heating both in vitro as well as in vivo . Thus, we show an excellent thermotransductive property of gold enriched ECFCs and their capability to kill melanoma cells at moderate NIR light intensities.