Metabolizable alloy clusters assemble nanoinhibitor for enhanced radiotherapy of tumor by hypoxia alleviation and intracellular PD-L1 restraint.

BACKGROUND

Cancer radiotherapy (RT) still has limited clinical success because of the obstacles including radioresistance of hypoxic tumors, high-dose X-ray-induced damage to adjacent healthy tissue, and DNA-damage repair by intracellular PD-L1 in tumor.

RESULTS

Therefore, to overcome these obstacles multifunctional core-shell BMS@PtAu nanoparticles (NPs) are prepared using nanoprecipitation followed by electrostatic assembly. PtAu clusters are released from BMS@PtAu NPs to alleviate tumor hypoxia by catalyzing the decomposition of endogenous HO to generate O as well as by enhancing X-ray deposition at the tumor site, which thereby reduce the required X-ray dose. The released BMS-202 molecules simultaneously blockade PD-L1 on and in tumor cells, causing the activation of effector T cells and the inhibition of DNA-damage repair. Consequently, radiotherapy based on BMS@PtAu NPs enhance the expression of calreticulin on cancer cells, transposition of HMGB1 from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), DNA breakage and apoptosis of cancer cells in vitro. The tumor inhibition rate reached 92.5% under three cycles of 1-Gy X-ray irradiation in vivo.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the therapeutic outcome supports the high-efficiency of radiotherapy based on BMS@PtAu NPs in hypoxic tumors expressing PD-L1.