The current study investigates the potential of estrone-3-sulphate (E3S) as a ligand for targeting Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptides (OATP), a family of membrane associated uptake transporters, for detection and diagnosis of hormone dependent breast cancers. E3S, an OATP substrate, is a predominant source of tumour estradiol in post-menopausal patients. To assess the potential of E3S as a...

Abstract Background Although many treatments for breast cancer are available, poor tumour targeting limits the effectiveness of most approaches. Consequently, it is difficult to achieve satisfactory results with monotherapies. The lack accurate diagnostic and monitoring methods also limit benefits treatment. aim this study was design a nanocarrier comprising porous gold nanoshells (PGNSs) co-de...

BACKGROUND Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) receptors are overexpressed in a broad variety of tumours. For the detection of these tumours, novel chemically modified and shortened VIP derivatives were designed. MATERIALS AND METHODS 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (DOTA)-derivatised VIP analogues were radiolabelled with (111)In and in vitro and in vivo behaviour was...

Background The design of antibody derivatives with higher tumour cell selectivity is hoped to improve cancer immunotherapy and to decrease side effects. One promising molecular format that we have developed is the triple body. A triple body allows for selective lysis based on its ‘dual targeting’ capacity. The triple body format consists of three linked single chain variable fragments (scFv) wi...

Tumour-stromal interactions are a determining factor in cancer progression. In vivo, the interaction interface is associated with spatially resolved distributions of cancer and stromal phenotypes. Here, we establish a micropatterned tumour-stromal assay (μTSA) with laser capture microdissection to control the location of co-cultured cells and analyse bulk and interfacial tumour-stromal signalli...

Endoglin/CD105 is well acknowledged as being the most reliable marker of proliferation of endothelial cells, and it is overexpressed on tumour neovasculature. Our current knowledge of its structure, physiological role, and tissue distribution suggests that targeting of endoglin/CD105 is a novel and powerful diagnostic and therapeutic strategy in human malignancies, through the imaging of tumour...

Neovascular targeting is an established approach for the therapy of prostate cancer (PCa). Cationic liposomes have been shown to be absorbed by immature vascular endothelial cells due to negative electric charge of their outer cell membrane. We aimed to evaluate the antitumoural efficacy of paclitaxel encapsulated in cationic liposomes for the treatment of PCa. Tumours were generated by subcuta...

Hypoxia promotes tumour aggressiveness and resistance of cancers to oncological treatment. The identification of cancer cell internalizing antigens for drug targeting to the hypoxic tumour niche remains a challenge of high clinical relevance. Here we show that hypoxia down-regulates the surface proteome at the global level and, more specifically, membrane proteome internalization. We find that ...

Zoledronic acid (ZA) is a biphosphonate used for osteoporosis treatment and also proved to be effective to reduce the pain induced by bone metastases when used as adjuvant therapy in solid cancers. However, it has been recently proposed that ZA could have direct anti-tumour effects, although the molecular mechanism is unknown. We herein unravel a novel anti-tumour activity of ZA in prostate can...