Cell Membrane-Coated Hollow Manganese Dioxide Drug Delivery Nanosystem for Targeted Liver Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

Drug delivery nanosystems can effectively enhance the efficiency of drugs in the treatment process. However, traditional drug delivery nanosystems suffer from easy clearance by the immune system, lack of targeting, and nonresponsive drug release. Herein, we designed a biomimetic hollow manganese dioxide (H-MnO2) nanocarrier, which is coated with the homologous cell membrane and enables pH-controlled release in the tumor microenvironment (TME), to deliver sorafenib (SOR) for targeted diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer. The coated hepatoma cell membrane gives SOR-loaded H-MnO2 good immune evasion ability, enabling it to reach tumor cells smoothly and rapidly degrade and release SOR in the TME. During this process, Mn2+ resulting from H-MnO2 degradation can also be subjected to T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Furthermore, compared with free SOR and nontargeted H-MnO2–SOR nanoparticles, CM–H-MnO2–SOR was proved by in vitro cell experiments to be more easily ingested by hepatoma cells. This result shows better targeting of hepatoma cells and strong immune escape ability, therefore significantly inhibiting the growth of hepatoma cells and improving the apoptosis rate. In vivo animal experiments show that CM–H-MnO2–SOR has good MRI ability, excellent tumor treatment effect, and high biological safety. In total, we believe all these advantages would make CM–H-MnO2–SOR an ideal choice for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) diagnosis and treatment.