94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1573628
This article is part of the Research TopicNovel Molecular Targets in Cancer TherapyView all 27 articles
Preparation of RGD-modified liposome encapsulated with shikonin and its targeted anti-melanoma effects
Provisionally accepted- Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Melanoma is the most aggressive skin tumour and conventional treatment is incurable. Studies have shown that shikonin derived from traditional Chinese medicine Lithospermum erythrorhizon has various anticancer activities. In this work, RGD-modified liposome encapsulated with shikonin (RGD-Lip-SHK) was prepared, which could highly recognize the integrin αVβ3 on the surface of melanoma cells. RGD-Lip-SHK appeared as spheroid-like vesicles and particle size about 120 nm and their ξ-potential was negative. RGD-Lip-SHK maintained stable in serum within 48 h and possessed sustained-release effect. In vitro, compared with nontargeted liposomes (Lip-SHK), RGD-Lip-SHK were more efficiently taken up and had higher cytotoxicity, and were better targeted to inhibit cell growth, migration, invasion and boosted cell apoptosis by regulating the expression of Bcl-2 and Bax proteins in melanoma cells. In vivo, RGD-Lip-SHK had the strongest targeted antimelanoma effect by αVβ3-mediated endocytosis with a long circulation time, and inhibited tumour growth in B16F10 tumour-bearing mice compared to other groups. Furthermore, Histology of major organs and the bodyweight of mice showed RGD-Lip-SHK had few toxicity. In short, these results indicated that RGD-Lip-SHK had great potential for targeted treatment of melanoma, thereby presenting a novel and high effective therapeutic strategy for tumour targeted therapy.
Keywords: Shikonin, Melanoma, Liposomes, RGD, αvβ3 integrin
Received: 09 Feb 2025; Accepted: 09 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Zhao, Chen, Mao, Li, Fan, Li and Wen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xianchun Wen, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.