Abstract

Significance Limited treatment options exist for cancer within the bone, as demonstrated by the inevitable, pernicious course of metastatic breast, prostate, and blood cancers. The difficulty of eliminating bone-residing cancer necessitates novel, alternative treatments to manipulate the tumor cells and their microenvironment, with minimal off-target effects. To this end, we engineered bone-homing, stealth nanoparticles to deliver anticancer, bone-stimulatory drugs, and demonstrated their utility with bortezomib (a model drug) and multiple myeloma (a model cancer). To test our hypothesis that increasing bone volume and strength inhibits tumor growth, mice were treated with these nanoparticles before being injected with cancer cells. Results demonstrated significantly slower myeloma growth and prolonged survival. Our research demonstrates the potential of bone-homing nanomedicine as an efficacious cancer treatment mechanism.