Development of a new type of multifunctional fucoidan-based nanoparticles for anticancer drug delivery

Fucoidan, a sulfated marine polysaccharide, has many potential biological functions, including anticancer activity. Recently, fucoidan has been reported to target P-selectin expressed on metastatic cancer cells. Increasing research attention has been devoted to the developments of fucoidan-based nanomedicine. However, the application of traditional chitosan/fucoidan nanoparticles in anticancer drug delivery may be limited due to the deprotonation of chitosan at a pH greater than 6.5. In this study, a mutli-stimuli-responsive nanoparticle self-assembled by fucoidan and a cationic polypeptide (protamine) was developed, and their pH-/enzyme-responsive properties were characterized by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and zeta potential analysis. Enzymatic digestion and acidic intracellular microenvironment (pH 4.5-5.5) in cancer cells triggered the release of an anticancer drug (doxorubicin) from the nanoparticles. The protamine/fucoidan complex nanoparticles with P-selectin mediated endocytosis, charge conversion and stimuli-tunable release properties showed an improved inhibitory effect against a metastatic breast cancer cell line (MDA-MB-231).