Arginine-conjugated albumin microspheres inhibits proliferation and migration in lung cancer cells.

Arginine is one of the essential amino acid involved in numerous biosynthetic pathways that significantly influence tumor growth. It has been demonstrated that arginine is effective to inhibit proliferation of cancer cells when an appropriate dose is applied. Generally, induction of cell death requires high concentration of arginine while low concentration of arginine facilitates cell proliferation. In addition to the apoptosis induced by metabolism of arginine, it has also been reported that in an ideal solution environment, arginine may assemble into arginine clusters to kill cancer cells. Therefore, to make the arginine an effective anticancer agent, arginine/albumin microspheres were designed and synthesized to provide a localized high concentration of arginine on tumor sites. In addition, the arginine/albumin mesospheres (AAMS) are also expected to provide an arginine-rich surface on microspheres, which is similar to the arginine cluster, to effectively inhibit tumor growth. In this study, the AAMS were synthesized through a water/organic solvent emulsion system and the surface properties were characterized. The in vitro effects of AAMS on A549, CRL-2081, MAK9 lung cancer cells (LCC) proliferation, migration, and tumor growth were determined. The expression of oncogenic protein EphA2 and transcription factor slug was also determined. AAMS significantly inhibited the cell proliferation, cell migration and tumor growth in all the three LCC, while same concentration of free arginine promoted the LCC tumor growth and migration. Our studies indicate that the synthesized AAMS has a more effective inhibiting effect on proliferation, migration and tumor growth of LCC than freely released arginine. The expression of EphA2 receptor mRNA was significantly decreased when compared to control cells. In addition the mRNA expression of transcription factor slug was also inhibited by AAMS suggesting that AAMS affects the expression of EphA2 and slug and may regulate LCC proliferation and migration. These data suggests that the AAMS can be an ideal delivery vehicle for therapeutic interventions against LCCs.