A Trojan-Horse Strategy by <i>In Situ</i> Piggybacking onto Endogenous Albumin for Tumor-Specific Neutralization of Oncogenic MicroRNA

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a recently discovered class of noncoding RNAs, play pivotal roles in regulating fundamental biological processes by suppressing the expression of target genes. Aberrant miRNA expression is commonly correlated with human diseases, including cancers. Anti-miRNA oligonucleotides provide an innovative therapeutic strategy for silencing disease-associated miRNAs. However, the clinical application of anti-miRNA therapy has been limited by formulation challenges and physiological delivery barriers. Here, to provide the safe and effective tumor-targeted delivery of anti-miRNAs, we designed carrier-free maleimide-functionalized anti-miRNAs (MI-Anti-miRNAs) that enable "piggybacking" onto albumin <i>in vivo</i>. These functionalized MI-Anti-miRNAs covalently bind to cysteine-34 of endogenous albumin within minutes. In addition to resulting in a markedly extended blood circulation lifetime, this strategy allows MI-Anti-miRNAs to "hitchhike" to the tumor site. Importantly, <i>in situ</i>-generated albumin-Anti-miRNAs are capable of intracellularly internalizing highly negatively charged anti-miRNA molecules and knocking down target miRNAs. In particular, MI-Anti-miRNAs that targeted miRNA-21, which is involved in tumor initiation, progression, invasion, and metastasis in several types of cancer, successfully repressed miRNA-21 activity, resulting in a superior antitumor activity in both solid and metastatic tumor models without causing systemic toxicity. This endogenous albumin-piggybacking approach using MI-Anti-miRNAs provides a simple and broadly applicable platform strategy for the systemic delivery of anti-miRNA therapeutics.