Despite recent progressions in
cancer genomic and
immunotherapies, advanced
melanoma still represents a life threat, pushing to optimise new targeted nanotechnology approaches for specific drug delivery to the tumour. To this aim, owing to their biocompatibility and favourable technological features,
injectable lipid nanoemulsions were functionalised with
proteins owing to two alternative approaches:
transferrin was chemically grafted for active targeting, while
cancer cell membrane fragments wrapping was used for homotypic targeting. In both cases,
protein functionalisation was successfully achieved. Targeting efficiency was preliminarily evaluated using flow cytometry internalisation studies in two-dimensional cellular models, after fluorescence labelling of formulations with 6-coumarin. The uptake of cell-membrane-fragment-wrapped nanoemulsions was higher compared to uncoated nanoemulsions. Instead, the effect of
transferrin grafting was less evident in serum-enriched medium, since such
ligand probably undergoes competition with the endogenous
protein. Moreover, a more pronounced internalisation was achieved when a pegylated heterodimer was employed for conjugation (p < 0.05).