Cerium oxide nanoparticle delivery of microRNA-146a for local treatment of acute lung injury

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nano.2021.102388
• Publication Date: 2021-03-20T23:47:20Z
• Authors: Stephen M. Niemiec; Sarah A. Hilton; Alison Wallbank; Mark Azeltine; Amanda E. Louiselle; Hanan Elajaili; Ayed Allawzi; Junwang Xu; Courtney Mattson; Lindel C. Dewberry; Junyi Hu; Sushant Singh; Tamil S Sakthivel; Sudipta Sea; Eva Nozik-Grayck; Bradford Smith; Carlos Zgheib; Kenneth W. Liechty
• Keywords: Cerium oxide

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a devastating pulmonary disease with significant in-hospital mortality and the leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients. Excessive leukocyte recruitment, unregulated inflammation, resultant fibrosis contribute to poor ARDS outcomes. Nanoparticle technology cerium oxide nanoparticles (CNP) offers mechanism by which unstable therapeutics such as anti-inflammatory microRNA-146a can be locally delivered injured lung without systemic uptake. In this study, we evaluated potential radical scavenging CNP conjugated (termed CNP-miR146a) preventing acute injury (ALI) following exposure bleomycin. We have found that intratracheal delivery CNP-miR146a increases levels miR146a increases, prevents ALI altering reducing inflammation oxidative stress, decreasing collagen deposition, ultimately improving biomechanics.