Abstract
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are highly related to initiate metastasis and drive tumor relapse/propagation, and the induced cancer stemness and plasticity render cancer intractable to various therapeutic approaches. To address them, a CSC membrane-based fusion strategy is presented to target and attenuate cancer stemness and plasticity, and accordingly homogenous CSC-inherited fusion membrane-coated biomimetic nanoeffectors based on doxorubicin-loaded hydroxyapatite nanoparticles are engineered. Such biomimetic nanoeffectors coated with fusion membrane consisting of CSCs and cancer cells can not only specifically target the solid breast tumor cells, but also target the latent CSCs. Systematic experiments validate that the constructed nanoeffectors disrupt energy metabolism, trigger lethal mitochondrial apoptosis, remarkably inhibit tumor proliferation, and downregulate the expressions of some target proteins associated with cancer stemness and metastasis to attenuate cancer stemness and the induced plasticity. Contributed by them, such nanoeffectors have been demonstrated to successfully hinder the progression of breast cancer, and decrease lung metastasis in two cancer metastasis mouse models. Such CSCs membrane-based fusion membrane strategy provides a new candidate avenue rather than the currently dominant immune-related pathway to repress cancer metastasis via targeting and attenuating cancer stemness.