Priming the body to receive the therapeutic agent to redefine treatment benefit/risk profile

Abstract

Many therapeutic agents offer a low useful dose (dose responsible for efficacy)/useless dose (dose eliminated or responsible for toxicity) ratio, mainly due to the fact that therapeutic agents must ensure in one single object all the functions required to deliver the treatment, which leads to compromises in their physico-chemical design. Here we introduce the concept of priming the body to receive the treatment by uncorrelating these functions into two distinct objects sequentially administered: a nanoprimer occupying transiently the main pathway responsible for therapeutic agent limited benefit/risk ratio followed by the therapeutic agent. The concept was evaluated for different nature of therapeutic agents: For nanomedicines we designed a liposomal nanoprimer presenting preferential hepatic accumulation without sign of acute toxicity. This nanoprimer was able to increase the blood bioavailability of nanomedicine correlated with a lower hepatic accumulation. Finally this nanoprimer markedly enhanced anti-tumor efficacy of irinotecan loaded liposomes in the HT-29 tumor model when compared to the nanomedicine alone. Then, for small molecules we demonstrated the ability of a cytochrome inhibitor loaded nanoprimer to increase efficacy of docetaxel treatment. These results shown that specific nanoprimers could be designed for each family of therapeutic agents to answer to their specific needs.