Moreno-Lanceta Alazne, Medrano-Bosch Mireia, Melgar-Lesmes Pedro
Department of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, University of Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain.
Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Service, Hospital Clínic Universitari, IDIBAPS, CIBERehd, 08036 Barcelona, Spain.
Pharmaceutics. 2020 Sep 7;12(9):850. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics12090850.
Cancer has become one of the most prevalent diseases worldwide, with increasing incidence in recent years. Current pharmacological strategies are not tissue-specific therapies, which hampers their efficacy and results in toxicity in healthy organs. Carbon-based nanomaterials have emerged as promising nanoplatforms for the development of targeted delivery systems to treat diseased cells. Single-walled carbon nanohorns (SWCNH) are graphene-based horn-shaped nanostructure aggregates with a multitude of versatile features to be considered as suitable nanosystems for targeted drug delivery. They can be easily synthetized and functionalized to acquire the desired physicochemical characteristics, and no toxicological effects have been reported in vivo followed by their administration. This review focuses on the use of SWCNH as drug delivery systems for cancer therapy. Their main applications include their capacity to act as anticancer agents, their use as drug delivery systems for chemotherapeutics, photothermal and photodynamic therapy, gene therapy, and immunosensing. The structure, synthesis, and covalent and non-covalent functionalization of these nanoparticles is also discussed. Although SWCNH are in early preclinical research yet, these nanotube-derived nanostructures demonstrate an interesting versatility pointing them out as promising forthcoming drug delivery systems to target and treat cancer cells.
癌症已成为全球最普遍的疾病之一，近年来发病率不断上升。目前的药理学策略并非组织特异性疗法，这限制了其疗效，并导致健康器官出现毒性。碳基纳米材料已成为开发靶向递送系统以治疗病变细胞的有前景的纳米平台。单壁碳纳米角（SWCNH）是基于石墨烯的角状纳米结构聚集体，具有多种通用特性，可被视为用于靶向药物递送的合适纳米系统。它们可以很容易地合成和功能化以获得所需的物理化学特性，并且在体内给药后未报告有毒理学效应。本综述重点关注SWCNH作为癌症治疗药物递送系统的应用。它们的主要应用包括作为抗癌剂的能力、作为化疗药物、光热和光动力疗法、基因疗法以及免疫传感的药物递送系统。还讨论了这些纳米颗粒的结构、合成以及共价和非共价功能化。尽管SWCNH仍处于临床前早期研究阶段，但这些源自纳米管的纳米结构展现出有趣的多功能性，表明它们是未来有前景的靶向和治疗癌细胞的药物递送系统。
