Development of medical-grade, discrete, multi-walled carbon nanotubes as drug delivery molecules to enhance the treatment of hematological malignancies

The clinical regimens and cell membrane camouflaged nanodrug delivery systems in hematologic malignancies treatment

Hematologic malignancies (HMs), also referred to as hematological or blood cancers, pose significant threats to patients as they impact the blood, bone marrow, and lymphatic system. Despite significant clinical strategies using chemotherapy, radiotherapy, stem cell transplantation, targeted molecular therapy, or immunotherapy, the five-year overall survival of patients with HMs is still low. Fortunately, recent studies demonstrate that the nanodrug delivery system holds the potential to address these challenges and foster effective anti-HMs with precise treatment. In particular, cell membrane camouflaged nanodrug offers enhanced drug targeting, reduced toxicity and side effects, and/or improved immune response to HMs. This review firstly introduces the merits and demerits of clinical strategies in HMs treatment, and then summarizes the types, advantages, and disadvantages of current nanocarriers helping drug delivery in HMs treatment. Furthermore, the types, functions, and mechanisms of cell membrane fragments that help nanodrugs specifically targeted to and accumulate in HM lesions are introduced in detail. Finally, suggestions are given about their clinical translation and future designs on the surface of nanodrugs with multiple functions to improve therapeutic efficiency for cancers.

Curcumin coating: a novel solution to mitigate inherent carbon nanotube toxicity

Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) are inert structures with high aspect ratios that are widely used as vehicles for targeted drug delivery in cancer and many other diseases. They are largely non-toxic in nature however, when cells are exposed to these nanotubes for prolonged durations or at high concentrations, they show certain adverse effects. These include cytotoxicity, inflammation, generation of oxidative stress, and genotoxicity among others. To combat such adverse effects, various moieties can be attached to the surface of these nanotubes. Curcumin is a known anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and cytoprotective compound derived from a medicinal plant called Curcuma longa. In this study, we have synthesized and characterized Curcumin coated-lysine functionalized MWCNTs and further evaluated the cytoprotective, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antiapoptotic effect of Curcumin coating on the surface of MWCNTs. The results show a significant decrease in the level of inflammatory molecules like IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β, TNFα and NFκB in cells exposed to Curcumin-coated MWCNTs as compared to the uncoated ones at both transcript and protein levels. Further, compared to the uncoated samples, there is a reduction in ROS production and upregulation of antioxidant enzyme-Catalase in the cells treated with Curcumin-coated MWCNTs. Curcumin coating also helped in recovery of mitochondrial membrane potential in the cells exposed to MWCNTs. Lastly, cells exposed to Curcumin-coated MWCNTs showed reduced cell death as compared to the ones exposed to uncoated MWCNTs. Our findings suggest that coating of Curcumin on the surface of MWCNTs reduces its ability to cause inflammation, oxidative stress, and cell death.

Carbon Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications: Progress and Outlook

Recent developments in nanoscale materials have found extensive use in various fields, especially in the biomedical industry. Several substantial obstacles must be overcome, particularly those related to nanostructured materials in biomedicine, before they can be used in therapeutic applications. Significant concerns in biomedicine include biological processes, adaptability, toxic effects, and nano-biointerfacial properties. Biomedical researchers have difficulty choosing suitable materials for drug carriers, cancer treatment, and antiviral uses. Carbon nanomaterials are among the various nanoparticle forms that are continually receiving interest for biomedical applications. They are suitable materials owing to their distinctive physical and chemical properties, such as electrical, high-temperature, mechanical, and optical diversification. An individualized, controlled, dependable, low-carcinogenic, target-specific drug delivery system can diagnose and treat infections in biomedical applications. The variety of carbon materials at the nanoscale is remarkable. Allotropes and other forms of the same element, carbon, are represented in nanoscale dimensions. These show promise for a wide range of applications. Carbon nanostructured materials with exceptional mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties include graphene and carbon nanotubes. They can potentially revolutionize industries, including electronics, energy, and medicine. Ongoing investigation and expansion efforts continue to unlock possibilities for these materials, making them a key player in shaping the future of advanced technology. Carbon nanostructured materials explore the potential positive effects of reducing the greenhouse effect. The current state of nanostructured materials in the biomedical sector is covered in this review, along with their synthesis techniques and potential uses.

The D-amino acid oxidase-carbon nanotubes: evaluation of cytotoxicity and biocompatibility of a potential anticancer nanosystem

The 'enzyme prodrug therapy' represents a promising strategy to overcome limitations of current cancer treatments by the systemic administration of prodrugs, converted by a foreign enzyme into an active anticancer compound directly in tumor sites. One example is D-amino acid oxidase (DAAO), a dimeric flavoenzyme able to catalyze the oxidative deamination of D-amino acids with production of hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen species (ROS), able to favor cancer cells death. A DAAO variant containing five aminoacidic substitutions (mDAAO) was demonstrated to possess a better therapeutic efficacy under low O2 concentration than wild-type DAAO (wtDAAO). Recently, aiming to design promising nanocarriers for DAAO, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were functionalized with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to reduce their tendency to aggregation and to improve their biocompatibility. Here, wtDAAO and mDAAO were adsorbed on PEGylated MWCNTs and their activity and cytotoxicity were tested. While PEG-MWCNTs-DAAOs have shown a higher activity than pristine MWCNTs-DAAO (independently on the DAAO variant used), PEG-MWCNTs-mDAAO showed a higher cytotoxicity than PEG-MWCNTs-wtDAAO at low O2 concentration. In order to evaluate the nanocarriers' biocompatibility, PEG-MWCNTs-DAAOs were incubated in human serum and the composition of protein corona was investigated via nLC-MS/MS, aiming to characterize both soft and hard coronas. The mDAAO variant has influenced the bio-corona composition in both number of proteins and presence of opsonins and dysopsonins: notably, the soft corona of PEG-MWCNTs-mDAAO contained less proteins and was more enriched in proteins able to inhibit the immune response than PEG-MWCNTs-wtDAAO. Considering the obtained results, the PEGylated MWCNTs conjugated with the mDAAO variant seems a promising candidate for a selective antitumor oxidative therapy: under anoxic-like conditions, this novel drug delivery system showed a remarkable cytotoxic effect controlled by the substrate addition, against different tumor cell lines, and a bio-corona composition devoted to prolong its blood circulation time, thus improving the drug's biodistribution.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-023-03568-1.

Carbon Nanomaterials (CNMs) in Cancer Therapy: A Database of CNM-Based Nanocarrier Systems

Carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) are an incredibly versatile class of materials that can be used as scaffolds to construct anticancer nanocarrier systems. The ease of chemical functionalisation, biocompatibility, and intrinsic therapeutic capabilities of many of these nanoparticles can be leveraged to design effective anticancer systems. This article is the first comprehensive review of CNM-based nanocarrier systems that incorporate approved chemotherapy drugs, and many different types of CNMs and chemotherapy agents are discussed. Almost 200 examples of these nanocarrier systems have been analysed and compiled into a database. The entries are organised by anticancer drug type, and the composition, drug loading/release metrics, and experimental results from these systems have been compiled. Our analysis reveals graphene, and particularly graphene oxide (GO), as the most frequently employed CNM, with carbon nanotubes and carbon dots following in popularity. Moreover, the database encompasses various chemotherapeutic agents, with antimicrotubule agents being the most common payload due to their compatibility with CNM surfaces. The benefits of the identified systems are discussed, and the factors affecting their efficacy are detailed.

Carbon Nanomaterials: Emerging Roles in Immuno-Oncology

Cancer immunotherapy has made breakthrough progress in cancer treatment. However, only a subset of patients benefits from immunotherapy. Given their unique structure, composition, and interactions with the immune system, carbon nanomaterials have recently attracted tremendous interest in their roles as modulators of antitumor immunity. Here, we focused on the latest advances in the immunological effects of carbon nanomaterials. We also reviewed the current preclinical applications of these materials in cancer therapy. Finally, we discussed the challenges to be overcome before the full potential of carbon nanomaterials can be utilized in cancer therapies to ultimately improve patient outcomes.

Carbon-based nanostructures for cancer therapy and drug delivery applications

Synthesis, design, characterization, and application of carbon-based nanostructures (CBNSs) as drug carriers have attracted a great deal of interest over the past half of the century because of their promising chemical, thermal, physical, optical, mechanical, and electrical properties and their structural diversity. CBNSs are well-known in drug delivery applications due to their unique features such as easy cellular uptake, high drug loading ability, and thermal ablation. CBNSs, including carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, nanodiamond, graphene, and carbon quantum dots have been quite broadly examined for drug delivery systems. This review not only summarizes the most recent studies on developing carbon-based nanostructures for drug delivery (e.g. delivery carrier, cancer therapy and bioimaging), but also tries to deal with the challenges and opportunities resulting from the expansion in use of these materials in the realm of drug delivery. This class of nanomaterials requires advanced techniques for synthesis and surface modifications, yet a lot of critical questions such as their toxicity, biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, and fate of CBNSs in biological systems must be answered.

Nanomedicine as a magic bullet for combating lymphoma

Hematological malignancy like lymphoma originates in lymph tissues and has a propensity to spread across other organs. Managing such tumors is challenging as conventional strategies like surgery and local treatment are not plausible options and there are high chances of relapse. The advent of novel targeted therapies and antibody-mediated treatments has proven revolutionary in the management of these tumors. Although these therapies have an added advantage of specificity in comparison to the traditional chemotherapy approach, such treatment alternatives suffer from the occurrence of drug resistance and dose-related toxicities. In past decades, nanomedicine has emerged as an excellent surrogate to increase the bioavailability of therapeutic moieties along with a reduction in toxicities of highly cytotoxic drugs. Nanotherapeutics achieve targeted delivery of the therapeutic agents into the malignant cells and also have the ability to carry genes and therapeutic proteins to the desired sites. Furthermore, nanomedicine has an edge in rendering personalized medicine as one type of lymphoma is pathologically different from others. In this review, we have highlighted various applications of nanotechnology-based delivery systems based on lipidic, polymeric and inorganic nanomaterials that address different targets for effectively tackling lymphomas. Moreover, we have discussed recent advances and therapies available exclusively for managing this malignancy.

Carbon nanotubes as an emerging nanocarrier for the delivery of doxorubicin for improved chemotherapy

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a versatile nanocarrier for doxorubicin (DOX) delivery had attracted significant attention in drug delivery of pharmaceuticals. Several properties such as high surface area, high drug loading capacity, stability, ease of functionalization, ultrahigh length to diameter ratio and good cellular uptake make them preferred nanocarrier as multipurpose drug delivery system. Several surface properties of CNTs can be easily modified by covalent/noncovalent functionalization, which can make CNTs a profound nanomaterial. Hydrophobic surface of CNTs facilitated π-π stacking interactions, with several drugs and therapeutic agents having aromatic ring in their structure, for example anthracyclines. In case some drug molecules, electrostatic interaction between drug and CNTs comes into the picture. DOX, an anthracycline anticancer drug, can easily adsorb on the surface of CNTs by π-π stacking interactions. In present article, we have reviewed various CNTs based drug delivery systems for the delivery of DOX alone or in combination with genetic materials and other drug molecules. In addition, we described recent updates in CNTs based drug delivery system for the delivery of DOX, we covered adsorption and desorption, different types of functionalization, to alter the properties of CNTs in vitro and in vivo. CNT attached many targeting ligands for the targeted delivery of DOX have also been discussed.

Recent advances in carbon nanomaterials for biomedical applications: A review

With the emergence of new pathogens like coronavirus disease 2019 and the prevalence of cancer as one of the leading causes of mortality globally, the effort to develop appropriate materials to address these challenges is a critical research area. Researchers around the world are investigating new types of materials and biological systems to fight against various diseases that affect humans and animals. Carbon nanostructures with their properties of straightforward functionalization, capability for drug loading, biocompatibility, and antiviral properties have become a major focus of biomedical researchers. However, reducing toxicity, enhancing biocompatibility, improving dispersibility, and enhancing water solubility have been challenging for carbon-based biomedical systems. The goal of this article is to provide a review on the latest progress involving the use of carbon nanostructures, namely fullerenes, graphene, and carbon nanotubes, for drug delivery, cancer therapy, and antiviral applications.

Carbon Dots as Nanotherapeutics for Biomedical Application

Carbon nanodots are zero-dimensional spherical allotropes of carbon and are less than 10nm in size (ranging from 2-8nm). Based on their biocompatibility, remarkable water solubility, eco- friendliness, conductivity, desirable optical properties and low toxicity, carbon dots have revolutionized the biomedical field. In addition, they have intrinsic photo-luminesce to facilitate bio-imaging, bio-sensing and theranostics. Carbon dots are also ideal for targeted drug delivery. Through functionalization of their surfaces for attachment of receptor-specific ligands, they ultimately result in improved drug efficacy and a decrease in side-effects. This feature may be ideal for effective chemo-, gene- and antibiotic-therapy. Carbon dots also comply with green chemistry principles with regard to their safe, rapid and eco-friendly synthesis. Carbon dots thus, have significantly enhanced drug delivery and exhibit much promise for future biomedical applications. The purpose of this review is to elucidate the various applications of carbon dots in biomedical fields. In doing so, this review highlights the synthesis, surface functionalization and applicability of biodegradable polymers for the synthesis of carbon dots. It further highlights a myriad of biodegradable, biocompatible and cost-effective polymers that can be utilized for the fabrication of carbon dots. The limitations of these polymers are illustrated as well. Additionally, this review discusses the application of carbon dots in theranostics, chemo-sensing and targeted drug delivery systems. This review also serves to discuss the various properties of carbon dots which allow chemotherapy and gene therapy to be safer and more target-specific, resulting in the reduction of side effects experienced by patients and also the overall increase in patient compliance and quality of life.

Preparation, characterisation and biological evaluation of biopolymer-coated multi-walled carbon nanotubes for sustained-delivery of silibinin

This research work represents the first major step towards constructing an effective therapeutic silibinin (SB) in cancer treatment using oxidised multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-COOH) functionalised with biocompatible polymers as the potential drug carrier. In an attempt to increase the solubility and dispersibility of SB-loaded nanotubes (MWSB), four water-soluble polymers were adopted in the preparation process, namely polysorbate 20 (T20), polysorbate 80 (T80), polyethylene glycol (PEG) and chitosan (CHI). From the geometry point of view, the hydrophobic regions of the nanotubes were loaded with water-insoluble SB while the hydrophilic polymers functionalised on the outer surfaces of the nanotubes serve as a protective shell to the external environment. The chemical interaction between MWSB nanocomposites and polymer molecules was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy. Besides, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and UV–visible spectrophotometry were also employed to characterise the synthesised nanocomposites. The morphological study indicated that the polymers were deposited on the external surfaces of MWSB and the nanocomposites were seen to preserve their tubular structures even after the coating process was applied. The TGA results revealed that the incorporation of biopolymers practically improved the overall thermal stability of the coated MWSB nanocomposites. Evaluation of the in vitro effect on drug release rate by the nanocomposites was found to follow a biphasic release manner, showing a fast release at an initial stage and then a sustained-release over 2500 min. Besides, the drug release mechanisms of the nanocomposites demonstrated that the amount of SB released in the simulated environment was governed by pseudo-second order in which, the rate-limiting step mainly depends on diffusion of drug through chemisorption reaction. Finally, MTT assay showed that the coated MWSB nanocomposites on 3T3 cells were very much biocompatible at a concentration up to 100 g/mL, which is an evidence of MWSB reduced cytotoxicity.

Synthetic strategies in construction of organic macromolecular carrier-drug conjugates

Many metabolic inhibitors, considered potential antimicrobial or anticancer drug candidates, exhibit very limited ability to cross the biological membranes of target cells. The restricted cellular penetration of those molecules is often due to their highhydrophilicity. One of the possible solutions to this problem is a conjugation of an inhibitor with a molecular organic nanocarrier. The conjugate thus formed should be able to penetrate the membrane(s) by direct translocation, endocytosis or active transport mechanisms and once internalized, the active component could reach its intracellular target, either after release from the conjugate or in an intact form. Several such nanocarriers have been proposed so far, including macromolecular systems, carbon nanotubes and dendrimers. Herein, we present a comprehensive review of the current status of rational design and synthesis of macromolecular organic nanocarrier-drug conjugates, with special attention focused on the mode of coupling of a nanocarrier moiety with a "cargo" molecule through linking fragments of non-cleavable or cleavable type.

Nanomaterials and Their Negative Effects on Human Health

Mesostructured silica, dendrimers, and allotropes of carbon were exhaustively used in biomedical, cosmetics, semiconductors, and food industry applications. Considering the huge prospect of nanomaterials, their potential hazards on exposure to humans and their related ecotoxicological effects needs to be summarized. Nanoparticles with size below 100 nm could pass into the lung and then to blood through inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact. As nanotechnology innovation is expected to achieve $ 2231 million by 2025, humans will be exposed ever increasingly in day-to-day life and in industries. In this review, the latest synthetic methodology of silica, dendrimers, and CNTs, their biological applications (in vitro and in vivo) related to toxicity were discussed. In terms of structured silica, the toxic and non-toxic effect induced by specific templates (cetylpyridinium bromide, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, C16L-tryptophan, C16-L-histidine, and C16-L-poline) that are used to generate mesoporous silica, silica nanoparticle sizes (25, 50, 60, 115, and 500 nm), and silane functionalization (NH₂ and COOH) were discussed. The recent applications of different generations (G3, G4, G5, and G6) of amphiphilic Janus dendrimers were discussed along with toxicity effect of different charged dendrimers (cationic and anionic) and effect of PEGylation. Recent synthesis, advantages, and disadvantages of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were presented for structures like single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The influence of diameter of SWCNTs (linear and short), thickness (thin and thick), effect of oxidation, metal oxide species (TiO₂, Fe, and Au), and biocompatible polymers (polyethylene glycol, bisphosphonate, and alendronate) were shown in relation to molecular pathways in animal cells.