Let‐7i miRNA and platinum loaded nano‐graphene oxide platform for detection/reversion of drug resistance and synergetic chemical‐photothermal inhibition of cancer cell

Biomimetic Nanosystem Loading Aggregation-Induced Emission Luminogens and SO2 Prodrug for Inhibiting Insufficient Photothermal Therapy-Induced Breast Cancer Recurrence and Metastasis

Photothermal therapy (PTT) holds considerable clinical promise. However, insufficient PTT-induced tumor recurrence and metastasis is an urgent practical problem that needs to be solved. Herein, a biomimetic mesoporous organosilicon nano-system called PSAB is designed to precisely deplete cancer stem cells (CSCs) and prevent tumor recurrence and metastasis after PTT. The PSAB system is made up of Aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active photothermal agent, 2TT-oC26B, and SO2 prodrug, benzothiazole sulfinate (BTS), within mesoporous organosilicon nanoparticles (MON) enclosed by an exterior platelet membrane. PSAB effectively targets CSCs both in vitro and in vivo by P-selectin/CD44 interaction. The degradation of MON and subsequent release of BTS and AIE molecules are facilitated by intracellular glutathione (GSH). Subsequently, the acidic tumor environment triggers the SO2 gas therapy from BTS. This process leads to the depletion of GSH and CSCs elimination. After combining PSAB with photothermal therapy, there is no significant tumor recurrence or metastasis. These results indicate that SO2 gas therapy and AIE-mediated PTT act synergistically to offer a unique approach for preventing tumor recurrence and metastasis after PTT, thus holding significant promise for clinical applications in cancer PTT.

Cisplatin-based miRNA delivery strategy inspired by the circCPNE1/miR-330-3p pathway for oral squamous cell carcinoma

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are ideal biomarkers of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) because of their highly stable closed-loop structure, and they can act as microRNA (miRNA) sponges to regulate OSCC progression. By analyzing clinical samples, we identified circCPNE1, a dysregulated circRNA in OSCC, and its expression level was negatively correlated with the clinical stage of OSCC patients. Gain-of-function assays revealed the tumor-suppressive effect of circCPNE1, which was then identified as a miR-330-3p sponge. MiR-330-3p was recognized as a tumor promoter in multiple studies, consistent with our finding that it could promote the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OSCC cells. These results indicated that selective inhibition of miR-330-3p could be an effective strategy to inhibit OSCC progression. Therefore, we designed cationic polylysine-cisplatin prodrugs to deliver antagomiR-330-3p (a miRNA inhibitory analog) via electrostatic interactions to form PP@miR nanoparticles (NPs). Paratumoral administration results revealed that PP@miR NPs effectively inhibited subcutaneous tumor progression and achieved partial tumor elimination (2/5), which confirmed the critical role of miR-330-3p in OSCC development. These findings provide a new perspective for the development of OSCC treatments.

Revolutionizing Cancer Care: Advances in Carbon-Based Materials for Diagnosis and Treatment

Cancer involves intricate pathological mechanisms marked by complexities such as cytotoxicity, drug resistance, stem cell proliferation, and inadequate specificity in current chemotherapy approaches. Cancer therapy has embraced diverse nanomaterials renowned for their unique magnetic, electrical, and optical properties to address these challenges. Despite the expanding corpus of knowledge in this area, there has been less advancement in approving nano drugs for use in clinical settings. Nanotechnology, and more especially the development of intelligent nanomaterials, has had a profound impact on cancer research and treatment in recent years. Due to their large surface area, nanoparticles can adeptly encapsulate diverse compounds. Furthermore, the modification of nanoparticles is achievable through a broad spectrum of bio-based substrates, including DNA, aptamers, RNA, and antibodies. This functionalization substantially enhances their theranostic capabilities. Nanomaterials originating from biological sources outperform their conventionally created counterparts, offering advantages such as reduced toxicity, lower manufacturing costs, and enhanced efficiency. This review uses carbon nanomaterials, including graphene-based materials, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) based nanomaterials, and carbon quantum dots (CQDs), to give a complete overview of various methods used in cancer theranostics. We also discussed their advantages and limitations in cancer diagnosis and treatment settings. Carbon nanomaterials might significantly improve cancer theranostics and pave the way for fresh tumor diagnosis and treatment approaches. More study is needed to determine whether using nano-carriers for targeted medicine delivery may increase material utilization. More insight is required to explore the correlation between heightened cytotoxicity and retention resulting from increased permeability.

Progress and Perspectives on Promising Covalent-Organic Frameworks (COFs) Materials for Energy Storage Capacity

In recent years, a new class of highly crystalline advanced permeable materials covalent-organic frameworks (COFs) have garnered a great deal of attention thanks to their remarkable properties, such as their large surface area, highly ordered pores and channels, and controllable crystalline structures. The lower physical stability and electrical conductivity, however, prevent them from being widely used in applications like photocatalytic activities and innovative energy storage and conversion devices. For this reason, many studies have focused on finding ways to improve upon these interesting materials while also minimizing their drawbacks. This review article begins with a brief introduction to the history and major milestones of COFs development before moving on to a comprehensive exploration of the various synthesis methods and recent successes and signposts of their potential applications in carbon dioxide (CO2 ) sequestration, supercapacitors (SCs), lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), and hydrogen production (H2 -energy). In conclusion, the difficulties and potential of future developing with highly efficient COFs ideas for photocatalytic as well as electrochemical energy storage applications are highlighted.

Graphene Oxide Nanostructures as Nanoplatforms for Delivering Natural Therapeutic Agents: Applications in Cancer Treatment, Bacterial Infections, and Bone Regeneration Medicine

Graphene, fullerenes, diamond, carbon nanotubes, and carbon dots are just a few of the carbon-based nanomaterials that have gained enormous popularity in a variety of scientific disciplines and industrial uses. As a two-dimensional material in the creation of therapeutic delivery systems for many illnesses, nanosized graphene oxide (NGO) is now garnering a large amount of attention among these materials. In addition to other benefits, NGO functions as a drug nanocarrier with remarkable biocompatibility, high pharmaceutical loading capacity, controlled drug release capability, biological imaging efficiency, multifunctional nanoplatform properties, and the power to increase the therapeutic efficacy of loaded agents. Thus, NGO is a perfect nanoplatform for the development of drug delivery systems (DDSs) to both detect and treat a variety of ailments. This review article's main focus is on investigating surface functionality, drug-loading methods, and drug release patterns designed particularly for smart delivery systems. The paper also examines the relevance of using NGOs to build DDSs and considers prospective uses in the treatment of diseases including cancer, infection by bacteria, and bone regeneration medicine. These factors cover the use of naturally occurring medicinal substances produced from plant-based sources.

Bioorthogonal Glycoengineering-Mediated Multifunctional Liquid Metal Nanoprobes for Highly Efficient Photoacoustic Imaging-Guided Photothermal/Chemotherapy of Tumor

The development of a multifunctional cancer diagnosis and treatment platform offers excellent prospects for the effective eradication of malignant solid tumors. Herein, a doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX)-loaded tannic acid (TA)-coated liquid metal (LM) multifunctional nanoprobe was synthesized and applied as a highly efficient platform for the photoacoustic (PA) imaging-guided photothermal/chemotherapy of tumor. The multifunctional nanoprobes exhibited strong near-infrared absorption, a remarkable photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE) of 55%, and high DOX loading capacity. Combined with the large intrinsic thermal expansion coefficient of LM, highly efficient PA imaging and effective drug release were realized. The LM-based multifunctional nanoprobes were specifically adsorbed into the cancer cells and tumor tissues via glycoengineering biorthogonal chemistry. The in vitro and in vivo photothermal/chemo-anticancer activity confirmed their promising potential in cancer treatment. The subcutaneous breast tumor-bearing mice completely recovered in 5 days under light illumination with clear PA imaging presentation, which showed better antitumor outcomes than single-mode chemotherapy or photothermal therapy (PTT), while keeping side effects at a minimum. Such an LM-based PA imaging-guided photothermal/chemotherapy strategy provided a valuable platform for resistant cancer precise treatment and intelligent biomedicine.

Applications of nanotechnologies for miRNA-based cancer therapeutics: current advances and future perspectives

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short (18-25 nt), non-coding, widely conserved RNA molecules responsible for regulating gene expression via sequence-specific post-transcriptional mechanisms. Since the human miRNA transcriptome regulates the expression of a number of tumor suppressors and oncogenes, its dysregulation is associated with the clinical onset of different types of cancer. Despite the fact that numerous therapeutic approaches have been designed in recent years to treat cancer, the complexity of the disease manifested by each patient has prevented the development of a highly effective disease management strategy. However, over the past decade, artificial miRNAs (i.e., anti-miRNAs and miRNA mimics) have shown promising results against various cancer types; nevertheless, their targeted delivery could be challenging. Notably, numerous reports have shown that nanotechnology-based delivery of miRNAs can greatly contribute to hindering cancer initiation and development processes, representing an innovative disease-modifying strategy against cancer. Hence, in this review, we evaluate recently developed nanotechnology-based miRNA drug delivery systems for cancer therapeutics and discuss the potential challenges and future directions, such as the promising use of plant-made nanoparticles, phytochemical-mediated modulation of miRNAs, and nanozymes.

Hypoxia-cleavable and specific targeted nanomedicine delivers epigenetic drugs for enhanced treatment of breast cancer and bone metastasis

Breast cancer bone metastasis has become a common cancer type that still lacks an effective treatment method. Although epigenetic drugs have demonstrated promise in cancer therapy, their nontargeted accumulation and drug resistance remain nonnegligible limiting factors. Herein, we first found that icaritin had a strong synergistic effect with an epigenetic drug (JQ1) in the suppression of breast cancer, which could help to relieve drug resistance to JQ1. To improve tumor-targeted efficacy, we developed a hypoxia-cleavable, RGD peptide-modified poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) nanoparticle (termed ARNP) for the targeted delivery of JQ1 and icaritin. The decoration of long cleavable PEG chains can shield RGD peptides during blood circulation and reduce cellular uptake at nonspecific sites. ARNP actively targets breast cancer cells via an RGD-αvβ3 integrin interaction after PEG chain cleavage by responding to hypoxic tumor microenvironment. In vitro and in vivo assays revealed that ARNP exhibited good biodistribution and effectively suppressed primary tumor and bone metastasis. Meanwhile, ARNP could alleviate bone erosion to a certain extent. Furthermore, ARNP significantly inhibited pulmonary metastasis secondary to bone metastasis. The present study suggests that ARNP has great promise in the treatment of breast cancer and bone metastasis due to its simple and practical potential.

Graphene family in cancer therapy: recent progress in cancer gene/drug delivery applications

In the past few years, the development in the construction and architecture of graphene based nanocomplexes has dramatically accelerated the use of nano-graphene for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes, fostering a new area of nano-cancer therapy. To be specific, nano-graphene is increasingly used in cancer therapy, where diagnosis and treatment are coupled to deal with the clinical difficulties and challenges of this lethal disease. As a distinct family of nanomaterials, graphene derivatives exhibit outstanding structural, mechanical, electrical, optical, and thermal capabilities. Concurrently, they can transport a wide variety of synthetic agents, including medicines and biomolecules, such as nucleic acid sequences (DNA and RNA). Herewith, we first provide an overview of the most effective functionalizing agents for graphene derivatives and afterward discuss the significant improvements in the gene and drug delivery composites based on graphene.

Multifunctional Carbon-Based Nanoparticles: Theranostic Applications in Cancer Therapy and Diagnosis

Cancer diagnosis and treatment are the most critical challenges in modern medicine. Conventional cancer treatments no longer meet the needs of the health field due to the high rate of mutations and epigenetic factors that have caused drug resistance in tumor cells. Hence, the search for unique methods and factors is quickly expanding. The development of nanotechnology in medicine and the search for a system to integrate treatment and diagnosis to achieve an effective approach to overcome the known limitations of conventional treatment methods have led to the emergence of theranostic nanoparticles and nanosystems based on these nanoparticles. An influential group of these nanoparticles is carbon-based theranostic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have received significant attention due to their unique properties, such as electrical conductivity, high strength, excellent surface chemistry, and wide range of structural diversity (graphene, nanodiamond, carbon quantum dots, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and carbon nanohorns). These nanoparticles were widely used in various fields, such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, imaging, and biosensors. In this review, we discuss in detail the recent features and advances in carbon-based theranostic nanoparticles and the advanced and diverse strategies used to treat diseases with these nanoparticles.

Photothermal nanohybrid hydrogels for biomedical applications

In the past decades, diseases such as wound infection, cancer, bone defect and osteoarthritis have constantly threatened the public health. However, the traditional treatment has many insufficiencies, such as high cost, easy recurrence and high biological toxicity. Hydrogel is a material with three-dimensional network structure, which has a series of advantages, such as injectability, self-heal ability, easy loading and controllability of drug release, and excellent biocompatibility. Therefore, it is extensively used in drug delivery, antibacterial, anti-cancer and other fields. However, the traditional hydrogels have the single performance, and therapeutic efficacy is often rely on the drugs loaded on them to cure diseases, which cannot achieve sustainable therapeutic effect. In order to solve this problem, photothermal nano hydrogel with photothermal agent (PTA) has become an ideal material due to its excellent physical and chemical properties. Photothermal nano hydrogels used in photothermal therapy (PTT) can exploit the photothermal effect of photothermal agent to increase local temperature and control the sol-gel phase transition behavior of hydrogels, so they are widely used in drug release, photothermal sterilization, photothermal inhibition of cancer cells and enhancement of bone repair. To sum up, this paper introduces the preparation of hydrogels with photothermal nanomaterials, and discusses their applications in the fields of drug release, photothermal sterilization, photothermal cancer cell inhibition and enhanced bone repair.

CuS nanoparticles and camptothecin co-loaded thermosensitive injectable hydrogel with self-supplied H2O2 for enhanced chemodynamic therapy

Chemodynamic therapy (CDT) is a kind of anti-tumor strategy emerging in recent years, but the concentration of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in the tumor microenvironment is insufficient, and it is difficult for a single CDT to completely inhibit tumor growth. Here, we designed a CuS nanoparticles (NPs) and camptothecin (CPT) co-loaded thermosensitive injectable hydrogel (SCH) with self-supplied H₂O₂ for enhanced CDT. SCH is composed of CuS NPs and CPT loaded into agarose hydrogel according to a certain ratio. We injected SCH into the tumor tissue of mice, and under the irradiation of near-infrared region (NIR) laser at 808 nm, CuS NPs converted the NIR laser into heat to realize photothermal therapy (PTT), and at the same time, the agarose hydrogel was changed into a sol state and CPT was released. CPT activates nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase, increases the level of H₂O₂ inside the tumor, and realizes the self-supply of H₂O₂. At the same time, CuS can accelerate the release of Cu²⁺ in an acidic environment and light, combined with H₂O₂ generated by CPT for CDT treatment, and consume glutathione in tumor and generate hydroxyl radical, thus inducing tumor cell apoptosis. The SCH system we constructed achieved an extremely high tumor inhibition rate in vitro and in vivo, presenting a new idea for designing future chemical kinetic systems.

Carbon-based Nanomaterials for delivery of small RNA molecules: a focus on potential cancer treatment applications

BACKGROUND

Nucleic acid-mediated therapy holds immense potential in the treatment of recalcitrant human diseases such as cancer. This is underscored by advances in understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation. In particular, the endogenous protective mechanism of gene silencing known as RNA interference (RNAi) has been extensively exploited.

METHODS

We review here the developments from 2011 to 2021, in the use of nanographene oxide, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, carbon nanohorns, carbon nanodots and nanodiamonds for the delivery of therapeutic small RNA molecules.

RESULTS

Appropriately designed effector molecules such as small interfering RNA (siRNA), can, in theory, silence the expression of any disease-causing gene. Alternatively, siRNA can be generated in vivo through the introduction of plasmid-based short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression vectors. Other small RNAs such as micro RNA (miRNA) also function in post-transcriptional gene regulation and are aberrantly expressed under disease conditions. The miRNA-based therapy involves either restoration of miRNA function through the introduction of miRNA mimics; or the inhibition of miRNA function by delivering anti-miRNA oligomers. However, the large size, hydrophilicity, negative charge and nuclease-sensitivity of nucleic acids necessitate an appropriate carrier for their introduction as medicine into cells.

CONCLUSION

While numerous organic and inorganic materials have been investigated for this purpose, the perfect carrier agent remains elusive. In recent years, carbon-based nanomaterials have received widespread attention in biotechnology due to their tunable surface characteristics, mechanical, electrical, optical and chemical properties.

Recent advances in anti-multidrug resistance for nano-drug delivery system

Chemotherapy for tumors occasionally results in drug resistance, which is the major reason for the treatment failure. Higher drug doses could improve the therapeutic effect, but higher toxicity limits the further treatment. For overcoming drug resistance, functional nano-drug delivery system (NDDS) has been explored to sensitize the anticancer drugs and decrease its side effects, which are applied in combating multidrug resistance (MDR) via a variety of mechanisms including bypassing drug efflux, controlling drug release, and disturbing metabolism. This review starts with a brief report on the major MDR causes. Furthermore, we searched the papers from NDDS and introduced the recent advances in sensitizing the chemotherapeutic drugs against MDR tumors. Finally, we concluded that the NDDS was based on several mechanisms, and we looked forward to the future in this field.

Ferroptosis-Driven Nanotherapeutics to Reverse Drug Resistance in Tumor Microenvironment

Ferroptosis, characterized by iron-dependent lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, is non-apoptotic programmed cell death highly relevant to tumor development. It was found to manipulate oncogenes and resistant mutations of cancer cells via lipid metabolism pathways converging on phospholipid glutathione peroxidase (GPX4) that squanders lipid peroxides (L-OOH) to block the iron-mediated reactions of peroxides, thus rendering resistant cancer cells vulnerable to ferroptotic cell death. By accumulating ROS and lipid peroxidation (LPO) products to lethal levels in tumor microenvironment (TME), ferroptosis-driven nanotherapeutics show a superior ability of eradicating aggressive malignancies than traditional therapeutic modalities, especially for the drug-resistant tumors with high metastasis tendency. Moreover, Fenton reaction, inhibition of GPX-4, and exogenous regulation of LPO are three major therapeutic strategies to induce ferroptosis in cancer cells, which were generally applied in ferroptosis-driven nanotherapeutics. In this review, we elaborate current trends of ferroptosis-driven nanotherapeutics to reverse drug resistance of tumors in anticancer fields at the intersection of cancer biology, materials science, and chemistry. Finally, their challenges and perspectives toward feasible translational studies are spotlighted, which would ignite the hope of anti-resistant cancer treatment.

In Situ Reduced Graphene Oxide and Polyvinyl Alcohol Nanocomposites With Enhanced Multiple Properties

The nanocomposites formed by graphene oxide (GO) and carbazate-modified polyvinyl alcohol (PVA-N) were developed to investigate their multiple properties for wide applications. Their physicochemical characterizations confirmed that the in situ reduced GO (rGO) not only decreased the crystallization but also induced the porous structures inside the nanocomposites. Significantly, it revealed that the comprehensive performance of PVA-N2-2%GO consisted of PVA-N2 with the carbazate degree of substitution (DS) of 7% and the weight ratio (wt%) of 2% GO displayed 79% of tensile elongation and tensile strength of 5.96 N/mm² (MPa) by tensile testing, glass transition temperature (Tg) of 60.8°C and decomposition temperature (Td) of 303.5°C by TGA and DSC, surface contact angle at 89.4 ± 2.1°, and electrical conductivity of 9.95 × 10⁻¹¹ S/cm. The abovementioned comprehensive performance was enhanced with the increased amount of in situ rGO, contributed by the high DS of the carbazate group in PVA-N and high amount of GO. The rGO by in situ reduction was the main driving force for enhancing the multiple properties inside the nanocomposites.