Nullifying tumor efflux by prolonged endolysosome vesicles: development of low dose anticancer-carbon nanotube drug.

As the majority of side effects of current chemotherapies stems from toxicity due to excessive dosing of anticancer drugs, minimizing the amount of drug while maximizing drug efficacy is essential to increase the life-quality of chemotherapy patients. This study demonstrated that the intracellular delivery of amide linked doxorubicin on carbon nanotube can nullify the efflux of cancer cells by achieving prolonged endolysosome delivery and can induce burst release of doxorubicin in an acidic hydrolase environment and, ultimately, can reduce the amount of anticancer drug by 10-fold compared to conventional effective drug dose. The clearance of accumulated carbon nanotubes in the liver was observed after 4 weeks, and analysis of liver toxicity markers showed no significant changes in GOT and GPT levels and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines across both short- and long-term periods.