Soft Materials Laboratory FUNSOM, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Institute of Functional Nano, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
Nano Lett. 2010 Sep 8;10(9):3318-23. doi: 10.1021/nl100996u.
Although biomedical applications of carbon nanotubes have been intensively studied in recent years, its sister, graphene, has been rarely explored in biomedicine. In this work, for the first time we study the in vivo behaviors of nanographene sheets (NGS) with polyethylene glycol (PEG) coating by a fluorescent labeling method. In vivo fluorescence imaging reveals surprisingly high tumor uptake of NGS in several xenograft tumor mouse models. Distinctive from PEGylated carbon nanotubes, PEGylated NGS shows several interesting in vivo behaviors including highly efficient tumor passive targeting and relatively low retention in reticuloendothelial systems. We then utilize the strong optical absorbance of NGS in the near-infrared (NIR) region for in vivo photothermal therapy, achieving ultraefficient tumor ablation after intravenous administration of NGS and low-power NIR laser irradiation on the tumor. Furthermore, no obvious side effect of PEGylated NGS is noted for the injected mice by histology, blood chemistry, and complete blood panel analysis in our pilot toxicity study. Although a lot more efforts are required to further understand the in vivo behaviors and the long-term toxicology of this new type of nanomaterials, our work is the first success of using carbon nanomaterials for efficient in vivo photothermal therapy by intravenous administration and suggests the great promise of graphene in biomedical applications, such as cancer treatment.
尽管近年来人们对碳纳米管在生物医学方面的应用进行了深入研究，但它的“姊妹材料”——石墨烯在生物医学领域的应用却鲜有探索。在这项工作中，我们首次采用荧光标记法研究了具有聚乙二醇（PEG）涂层的纳米石墨烯片（NGS）的体内行为。体内荧光成像显示，NGS 在几种异种移植肿瘤小鼠模型中出人意料地高摄取肿瘤。与 PEG 化碳纳米管不同，PEG 化 NGS 表现出一些有趣的体内行为，包括高效的肿瘤被动靶向和相对较低的网状内皮系统保留。然后，我们利用 NGS 在近红外（NIR）区域的强光吸收进行体内光热治疗，在静脉注射 NGS 和对肿瘤进行低功率 NIR 激光照射后，实现了超高效率的肿瘤消融。此外，在我们的初步毒性研究中，通过组织学、血液化学和全血细胞计数分析，未观察到注射 NGS 的小鼠有明显的副作用。尽管需要进一步努力来更深入地了解这种新型纳米材料的体内行为和长期毒性，但我们的工作是首次成功地通过静脉内给药利用碳纳米材料进行高效的体内光热治疗，并表明石墨烯在癌症治疗等生物医学应用中具有巨大的应用前景。
