Fluorinated Polymer Mediated Transmucosal Peptide Delivery for Intravesical Instillation Therapy of Bladder Cancer

Surgical intervention combined with intravesical instillation of chemotherapeutics to clear residual cancer cells after operation is the current standard treatment method for bladder cancer. However, the poor bioavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients for bladder cancer cells on account of the biological barriers of bladder mucosa, together with significant side effects of currently used intravesical medicine, have limited the clinical outcomes of localized adjuvant therapy for bladder cancer. Aiming at improved intravesical instillation therapy of bladder cancer, a fluorinated polyethylenimine (F‐PEI) is employed here for the transmucosal delivery of an active venom peptide, polybia‐mastoparan I (MPI), which shows selective antiproliferative effect against various bladder cancer cell lines. Upon simple mixing, MPI and F‐PET would coassemble to form stable nanoparticles, which show greatly improved cross‐membrane and transmucosal penetration capacities compared with MPI alone or nonfluorinated MPI/PEI nanoparticles. MPI/F‐PEI shows higher in vivo tumor growth inhibition efficacy for local treatment of a subcutaneous tumor model. More excitingly, as further demonstrated in an orthotopic bladder cancer model, MPI/F‐PEI offers remarkably improved therapeutic effects compared to those achieved by free MPI or the first‐line bladder cancer drug mitomycin C. This work presents a new transmucosal delivery carrier particularly promising for intravesical instillation therapy of bladder cancer. The fluorinated polymers like fluorinated polyethylenimine (F‐PEI) could be a promising type of transmucosal drug delivery carrier, which dramatically enhances cross‐membrane, transmucosal and intratumoral penetration abilities of peptides, and enables the effective use of peptide‐based therapeutics. This work extends the biomedical application of fluorinated polymers toward more clinically relevant directions, particularly promising for intravesical instillation therapy to treat bladder cancer.