Fig. 3: Mal LbL NPs efficiently target and deliver IL-12 to OC tumour nodules.
From: IL-12-releasing nanoparticles for effective immunotherapy of metastatic ovarian cancer
a–e, B6C3F1 mice (n = 4–5 animals per group) inoculated with 106 HM-1-luc tumour cells on day 0 were administered fluorescently tagged NPs carrying 20 µg of IL-12 on day 14. Four hours or 1 day after dosing, the animals were euthanized, and tissues were analysed ex vivo via IVIS. Pearson’s correlation coefficient is shown for groups (eight tissues with five replicates per group) with significant (P < 0.05) correlation between weight-normalized tissue NP fluorescence and IL-12 fluorescence 4 h after dosing (a), weight-normalized tissue IL-12 fluorescence 1 day after dosing in UGT and omentum (mean ± s.d.; b), Pearson’s correlation coefficient for groups (eight tissues with five replicates per group) with significant (P < 0.05) correlation between weight-normalized tissue IL-12 fluorescence and BLI 1 day after dosing (c), representative omentum and UGT tissue IVIS BLI and IL-12 fluorescence images for Mal UL and Mal LbL (d) and pixel-by-pixel Spearman’s correlation coefficient between IL-12 fluorescence and BLI 1 day after dosing from IVIS images across all tissues (e; mean ± s.d., eight tissues with five replicates per group). f,g, B6C3F1 mice were treated as that in a. One day after dosing, Mal LbL NP animals were euthanized, and the omentum containing tumour nodules was frozen in OCT compound and then frozen, sectioned and stained for confocal microscopy analysis. Representative confocal microscopy images of tumour nodules in omental tissue are shown at low (f) and high (g) magnifications. The green arrows indicate areas with a high NP signal relative to IL-12, whereas yellow arrowheads indicate areas with high IL-12 relative to NPs. Statistics derived using all n from the experiment with each animal as a data point. For a and c, correlation significance performed based on a two-sided t-test analysis with the null hypothesis of no (r = 0) correlation and no adjustments for multiple comparisons. Group statistical comparisons were performed using two-way ANOVA for b and one-way ANOVA for e with Tukey’s multiple comparisons test.
