The malignant tumor is a serious disease and the incidence and mortality kept on rising in recent years. Studies on tumor diagnosis and therapy have attracted major interest, and have great scientific significances and practical applications.

The research groups headed by Prof. HUANG Mingdong and Prof. CHEN Xueyuan at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have developed a novel tumor targeting drug carrier for optical imaging and therapy, which is published recently on Theranostics.

They generated a recombinant fusion protein ATF-HSA as a drug carrier based on recombinant protein production technique. Here, ATF is the amino-terminal fragment of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and contains all the structural elements necessary for the recognition to the uPA receptor (uPAR), which is over-expressed in malignant tumors and believed to play a critical role in tumor cell migration, adhesion and tissue remodeling.

Furthermore, they utilized human serum albumin (HSA) to carry cytotoxic agents to destroy targeted tumor cells. Such an uPAR-targeted drug carrier has been proven to be useful not only as a therapeutic agent for tumors, but also as an imaging agent for tumor detection. The ATF-HSA drug carrier and the research strategy developed by them can also be used to carry other drugs to render them tumor targeting specificity.

A drug carrier ATF-HSA can target to tumors through urokinase receptor (uPAR) that is over-expressed on tumor cell surfaces and carry cytotoxic agents to destroy targeted tumor cells. (Image by Prof. HUANG Mingdong’s group)