Palladium Complex-Supported Silica Nanocarriers: Enhancing Therapeutic Efficacy and Reducing Curcumin Toxicity in Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer (BC) is the most diagnosed tumour worldwide and triple-negative breast carcinoma (TNBC) stands out among all subtypes due to its high aggressiveness and high mortality rate. Treatments for this subtype are limited to radio-and chemotherapy due to the lack of specific therapeutic targets. Nanomedicine emerges as an alternative to overcome actual therapy challenges. Here, we propose a novel nanosystem based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) with a curcumin-palladium complex (PdCur) encapsulation that shows promising results against TNBC cells. The resulting nanomaterial, MSN-AP-PdCur, displayed an average size of 144 ± 7 nm, determined by transmission electron microscopy and quite good stability through various characterisation techniques. Antitumor activity assays showed a dose-dependent reduction of the cell metabolic activity of TNBC cells in vitro. Furthermore, the nanosystem mainly favoured the induction of two cell death pathways, such as apoptosis and autophagy, indicating its potential use as a nanomedicine-based therapeutic agent.