Zhao Jun, Zhou Min, Li Chun
Department of Cancer Systems Imaging, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1881 East Road, Houston, TX 77054 USA.
Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310009 Zhejiang China.
Cancer Nanotechnol. 2016;7(1):9. doi: 10.1186/s12645-016-0022-9. Epub 2016 Nov 16.
Radiotherapy has been, and will continue to be, a critical modality to treat cancer. Since the discovery of radiation-induced cytotoxicity in the late 19th century, both external and internal radiation sources have provided tremendous benefits to extend the life of cancer patients. Despite the dramatic improvement of radiation techniques, however, one challenge persists to limit the anti-tumor efficacy of radiotherapy, which is to maximize the deposited dose in tumor while sparing the rest of the healthy vital organs. Nanomedicine has stepped into the spotlight of cancer diagnosis and therapy during the past decades. Nanoparticles can potentiate radiotherapy by specifically delivering radionuclides or radiosensitizers into tumors, therefore enhancing the efficacy while alleviating the toxicity of radiotherapy. This paper reviews recent advances in synthetic nanoparticles for radiotherapy and radiosensitization, with a focus on the enhancement of in vivo anti-tumor activities. We also provide a brief discussion on radiation-associated toxicities as this is an area that, up to date, has been largely missing in the literature and should be closely examined in future studies involving nanoparticle-mediated radiosensitization.
放射治疗一直以来并将继续是治疗癌症的关键手段。自19世纪末发现辐射诱导的细胞毒性以来，外部和内部辐射源都为延长癌症患者的生命带来了巨大益处。然而，尽管放射技术有了显著进步，但仍存在一个挑战限制了放射治疗的抗肿瘤疗效，即要在最大限度地提高肿瘤内沉积剂量的同时保护其余健康重要器官。在过去几十年中，纳米医学已成为癌症诊断和治疗的焦点。纳米颗粒可以通过将放射性核素或放射增敏剂特异性地递送至肿瘤中来增强放射治疗效果，从而在提高疗效的同时减轻放射治疗的毒性。本文综述了用于放射治疗和放射增敏的合成纳米颗粒的最新进展，重点是增强体内抗肿瘤活性。我们还简要讨论了辐射相关毒性，因为这是一个迄今为止在文献中基本缺失的领域，在未来涉及纳米颗粒介导的放射增敏的研究中应予以密切关注。
