Guo Lin, Zhao Qilong, Wang Min
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
Institute of Biomedical & Health Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen 518055, China.
J Funct Biomater. 2024 Sep 24;15(10):277. doi: 10.3390/jfb15100277.
Cancer is one of the major threats to human health and lives. However, effective cancer treatments remain a great challenge in clinical medicine. As a common approach for cancer treatment, chemotherapy has saved the life of millions of people; however, patients who have gone through chemotherapy often suffer from severe side effects owing to the inherent cytotoxicity of anti-cancer drugs. Stabilizing the blood concentration of an anti-cancer drug will reduce the occurrence or severity of side effects, and relies on using an appropriate drug delivery system (DDS) for achieving sustained or even on-demand drug delivery. However, this is still an unmet clinical challenge since the mainstay of anti-cancer drugs is small molecules, which tend to be diffused rapidly in the body, and conventional DDSs exhibit the burst release phenomenon. Here, we establish a class of DDSs based on biodegradable core-shell microspheres with encapsulated doxorubicin hydrochloride-loaded gold nanoparticles (DOX@Au@MSs), with the core-shell microspheres being made of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) in the current study. By harnessing the physical barrier of the biodegradable shell of core-shell microspheres, DOX@Au@MSs can provide a sustained release of the anti-cancer drug in the test duration (which is 21 days in the current study). Thanks to the photothermal properties of the encapsulated gold nanoparticle carriers, the core-shell biodegradable microspheres can be ruptured through remotely controlled near-infrared (NIR) light, thereby achieving an NIR-controlled triggered release of the anti-cancer drug. Furthermore, the route of the DOX-Au@MS-enabled controlled release of the anti-cancer drug can provide durable cancer cell ablation for the long period of 72 h.
癌症是对人类健康和生命的主要威胁之一。然而，有效的癌症治疗在临床医学中仍然是一个巨大的挑战。作为癌症治疗的常用方法，化疗挽救了数百万人的生命；然而，接受化疗的患者常常因抗癌药物固有的细胞毒性而遭受严重的副作用。稳定抗癌药物的血药浓度将减少副作用的发生或严重程度，这依赖于使用合适的药物递送系统（DDS）来实现持续甚至按需给药。然而，这仍然是一个尚未解决的临床挑战，因为抗癌药物的主要成分是小分子，它们往往在体内迅速扩散，并且传统的DDS表现出突释现象。在此，我们基于包裹有负载盐酸阿霉素的金纳米颗粒的可生物降解核壳微球（DOX@Au@MSs）建立了一类DDS，在本研究中核壳微球由聚（乳酸-共-乙醇酸）制成。通过利用核壳微球可生物降解壳的物理屏障，DOX@Au@MSs在测试期间（本研究中为21天）能够实现抗癌药物的持续释放。由于包裹的金纳米颗粒载体的光热性质，核壳可生物降解微球可通过远程控制的近红外（NIR）光破裂，从而实现抗癌药物的近红外控制触发释放。此外，DOX-Au@MSs实现的抗癌药物控释途径可为长达72小时的持久癌细胞消融提供支持。
