Tumor embolization therapy often involves complex procedures and poses challenges for physicians, especially with radiological imaging guidance. Inspired by physiological processes of misfolded protein aggregation and thrombus formation, we developed a protein-based embolic agent using ethiodized oil and human serum albumin for targeted tumor embolization. By occupying the hydrophobic cavity of albumin and disrupting its refolding process, these ethiodized oil bound human serum albumin nanoparticles (Oil@HSA NPs) achieve spontaneous aggregation and size growth at high concentrations, a unique advantage over conventional phospholipid nanoparticles. When combined with bacterium-induced coagulation in tumor vessels, Oil@HSA NPs selectively accumulate at tumor sites, blocking blood flow and significantly inhibiting tumor growth. This study introduces a practical and innovative approach to tumor embolization, offering a streamlined and effective alternative for vascular targeting in cancer therapy.
Photothermal treatment has garnered immense interest as a promising approach for biomedical applications such as cancer ablation, yet its effectiveness is often limited by insufficient laser penetration and challenges in achieving efficient targeting of photothermal agents. Here we developed a transvascular interventional photothermal therapy (Ti-PTT), which employed a small-sized microcatheter (outer diameter: 0.63 mm, 1.9 Fr) equipped with an ultrafine optical fiber (diameter: 100 m) capable of simultaneously delivering photothermal agents while performing 808 nm laser irradiation via an endovascular route. Specifically, we employed two types of indocyanine green (ICG)-based photothermal agent, i.e. ICG solution serving as purely photothermal agent and ICG-ethiodized oil (ICG-EO) emulsion acting as radiopaque photothermal embolic agent. Using the customized microcatheter with the ICG solution, both proximal and distal embolization were able to executed in a rat liver model. Compared to the ICG solution, the ICG-EO emulsion dramatically enhanced the ICG retention time, enabling photothermally triggered precision vascular blockade to induce local embolization of large tissue volumes in a rat kidney model with unfavored ICG leakage rate. The Ti-PTT paves a way to broaden the potential applications of photothermal therapy through combining with clinical intervention-based approaches.
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