School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University , Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea.
ACS Nano. 2015 Oct 27;9(10):9678-90. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.5b02207. Epub 2015 Sep 11.
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been extensively studied for photothermal cancer therapy because AuNPs can generate heat upon near-infrared irradiation. However, improving their tumor-targeting efficiency and optimizing the nanoparticle size for maximizing the photothermal effect remain challenging. We demonstrate that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can aggregate pH-sensitive gold nanoparticles (PSAuNPs) in mildly acidic endosomes, target tumors, and be used for photothermal therapy. These aggregated structures had a higher cellular retention in comparison to pH-insensitive, control AuNPs (cAuNPs), which is important for the cell-based delivery process. PSAuNP-laden MSCs (MSC-PSAuNPs) injected intravenously to tumor-bearing mice show a 37-fold higher tumor-targeting efficiency (5.6% of the injected dose) and 8.3 °C higher heat generation compared to injections of cAuNPs after irradiation, which results in a significantly enhanced anticancer effect.
金纳米颗粒（AuNPs）由于在近红外辐射下能产生热量，因此被广泛研究用于光热癌症治疗。然而，提高其肿瘤靶向效率并优化纳米颗粒尺寸以最大化光热效应仍然具有挑战性。我们证明间充质干细胞（MSCs）可以在轻度酸性内涵体中聚集 pH 敏感的金纳米颗粒（PSAuNPs），靶向肿瘤，并用于光热治疗。与 pH 不敏感的对照金纳米颗粒（cAuNPs）相比，这些聚集结构具有更高的细胞保留率，这对于基于细胞的递药过程很重要。静脉注射负载 PSAuNP 的间充质干细胞（MSC-PSAuNPs）至荷瘤小鼠后，与注射 cAuNP 后照射相比，其肿瘤靶向效率（注射剂量的 5.6%）提高了 37 倍，产热量提高了 8.3°C，从而显著增强了抗癌效果。
