(232d) A Nanoemulsion Platform for Targeted Dendritic Cell Delivery

Nanoemulsions hold great potential as drug delivery vehicles as they can be tailored to deliver unique drug combinations needed for personalized medical interventions, in a cell-specific fashion. Here we report a tailorable nanocarrier emulsion (TNE) for the targeted co-delivery of therapeutics. A designed surface active peptide (SAP) with defined interfacial properties is used to stabilize an oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion. Incorporation of active components into the oil phase at the time of emulsion formation enables facile packaging, with decoration of the outer surface using simple additive processing steps that present functional antibody or PEG. In vitro results showed that TNE prepared in this way were internalized and well-tolerated by model APCs, with effective suppression of an internal protein target. Initial results also showed receptor-specific dendritic cell (DC) targeting both in vitro and in vivo. This work demonstrates a new type of biocompatible designer nanocarrier which can be manufactured and tailored for targeted cell therapy using simple additive preparation steps.