The main treatment measure currently used for
glioma treatment is
chemotherapy; the
biological barrier of solid
tumors hinders the deep penetration of nanomedicines and limits anticancer
therapy. Furthermore, the poor solubility of many chemotherapeutic drugs limits the efficacy of
antitumor drugs. Therefore, improving the solubility of chemotherapeutic agents and
drug delivery to
tumor tissues through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-
brain tumor barrier (BBTB) are major challenges in
glioma treatment. Nanostructured
lipid carriers (NLCs) have high
drug loading capacity, high stability, and high in vivo safety; moreover, they can effectively improve the solubility of insoluble drugs. Therefore, in this study, we used
solvent volatilization and ultrasonic melting methods to prepare
dihydroartemisinin nanostructured
lipid carrier (DHA-NLC). We further used the
glioma C6
cancer cell (CC) membrane to encapsulate DHA-NLC owing to the homologous targeting mechanism of the CC membrane; however, the targeting ability of the CC membrane was weak. We accordingly used targeting
ligands for modification, and developed a bionanostructured
lipid carrier with BBB and BBTB penetration and
tumor targeting abilities. The results showed that DHA-loaded NGR/CCNLC (
asparagine-glycine-arginine, NGR) was highly targeted, could penetrate the BBB and BBTB, and showed good anti-
tumor effects both in vitro and in vivo, which could effectively prolong the survival time of
tumor-bearing mice. Thus, the use of DHA-loaded NGR/CCNLC is an effective strategy for
glioma treatment and has the potential to treat
glioma.