Department of Chemistry Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya 60115, Indonesia.
Supramodification Nano-micro Engineering (SPANENG) research group, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya 60115, Indonesia.
Nanotheranostics. 2023 Jan 22;7(2):187-201. doi: 10.7150/ntno.80076. eCollection 2023.
Fluorescent Carbon dots (CDs) derived from biologically active sources have shown enhanced activities compared to their precursors. With their prominent potentiality, these small-sized (<10nm) nanomaterials could be easily synthesized from organic sources either by bottom-up or green approach. Their sources could influence the functional groups present on the CDs surfaces. A crude source of organic molecules has been used to develop fluorescent CDs. In addition, pure organic molecules were also valuable in developing practical CDs. Physiologically responsive interaction of CDs with various cellular receptors is possible due to the robust functionalization on their surface. In this review, we studied various literatures from the past ten years that reported the potential application of carbon dots as alternatives in cancer chemotherapy. The selective cytotoxic nature of some of the CDs towards cancer cell lines suggests the role of surface functional groups towards selective interaction, which results in over-expressed proteins characteristic of cancer cell lines. It could be inferred that cheaply sourced CDs could selectively bind to overexpressed proteins in cancer cells with the ultimate effect of cell death induced by apoptosis. In most cases, CDs-induced apoptosis directly or indirectly follows the mitochondrial pathway. Therefore, these nanosized CDs could serve as alternatives to the current kinds of cancer treatments that are expensive and have numerous side effects.
荧光碳点（CDs）来源于生物活性物质，与前体相比具有增强的活性。由于其显著的潜力，这些尺寸较小（<10nm）的纳米材料可以很容易地通过自上而下或绿色方法从有机来源合成。它们的来源可能会影响 CDs 表面存在的官能团。曾使用粗制的有机分子来源来开发荧光 CDs。此外，纯有机分子也可用于开发实用的 CDs。由于 CDs 表面的强大功能化，它们与各种细胞受体的生理响应相互作用成为可能。在这篇综述中，我们研究了过去十年中报告了碳点作为癌症化疗替代物的潜在应用的各种文献。一些 CDs 对癌细胞系具有选择性细胞毒性，这表明表面官能团在选择性相互作用中发挥作用，导致过度表达癌细胞系特有的蛋白质。可以推断，廉价来源的 CDs 可以选择性地与癌细胞中过表达的蛋白质结合，最终通过细胞凋亡诱导细胞死亡。在大多数情况下，CDs 诱导的细胞凋亡直接或间接地遵循线粒体途径。因此，这些纳米级的 CDs 可以替代目前昂贵且副作用多的癌症治疗方法。
