Simvastatin induced ferroptosis for triple-negative breast cancer therapy

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a management of aggressive breast cancer, remains an unmet medical challenge. Although a wave of efforts had spurred to design novel therapeutic method of TNBC, unpredictable prognosis with lacking effective therapeutic targets along with the resistance to apoptosis seriously limited survival benefits. Ferroptosis is a non-apoptotic form of cell death that is induced by excessive lipid peroxidation, which provide an innovative way to combat cancer. Emerging evidence suggests that ferroptosis plays an important role in the treatment of TNBC cells. Herein, a novel ferroptosis nanomedicine was prepared by loading simvastatin (SIM), a ferroptosis drug, into zwitterionic polymer coated magnetic nanoparticles (Fe(3)O(4)@PCBMA) to improve the therapeutic effect of TNBC. The as-obtained Fe(3)O(4)@PCBMA-SIM nanoparticles demonstrated more cytotoxicity against MDA-MB-231 than MCF-7 due to the higher expression of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (HMGCR), which demonstrated that statins could effectively kill TNBC. Further experiments showed that SIM could inhibit the expression of HMGCR to downregulate the mevalonate (MVA) pathway and glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), thereby inducing cancer cell ferroptosis. What’s more, PCBMA endows Fe(3)O(4)@PCBMA longer blood circulation performance to enhance their accumulation at tumor sites. Given that Fe(3)O(4) have proven for clinical applications by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and SIM could induce cancer cell ferroptosis, the developed Fe(3)O(4)@PCBMA-SIM nanosystem would have great potential in clinics for overcoming the drug resistance brought about by apoptotic drugs to cancer cells. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-021-01058-1.