Research progress of novel inorganic nanometre materials carriers in nanomedicine for cancer diagnosis and treatment

Nanomedicine, as the new achievement in combination of nanotechnology and medical science, has the potential to accurately monitor tumor for early diagnosis and dramatically improve the targeted, long-lasting and combinational therapy. Compared with traditional chemotheraphy, nanomedicine would effectively improve the drug accumulation and controlled release in the tumor sites to improve the therapeutic effect. Recently, all kinds of nanomedicines are designed and synthesized for tumor diagnosis and treatment based on inorganic nanocarriers, such as quantum dots, gold nanoparticles, silicon nanoparticles and so on. They might be adjusted and promoted their properties by core-shell structure, surface modification and other strategies. In this review, the inorganic nanometre materials as nanodrug carriers applied in tumor diagnosis and treatment were summarized; nanodrug carriers design strategies and mechanisms of tumor diagnosis and treatment were introduced in detail, the future and several questions still need to resolve about inorganic nanodrugs in tumor diagnosis and treatment of clinical application was prospected.

Intelligent Janus nanoparticles for intracellular real-time monitoring of dual drug release

Stimuli-responsive nanomaterials have been receiving much attention as drug delivery carriers, however understanding of multi-drug release from the carriers for efficient therapeutics is highly challenging. Here, we report a novel nanosystem, Janus particle Dox-CMR-MS/Au-6MP (Dox: doxorubicin, CMR: 7-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxylate, MS: mesoporous silica, Au: gold, 6MP: 6-mercaptopurine) with opposing MS and Au faces, which can monitor intracellular dual-drug (Dox and 6MP) controlled release in real time based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The FRET acceptor Dox is attached to CMR (as a FRET donor) conjugated MS with a pH-responsive linker hydrazone, and 6MP is conjugated to the Au surface through the gold-thiol interaction. As the Janus nanoparticle enters into tumor cells, the breakage of the hydrazone bond in an acidic environment and the substitution of glutathione (GSH) overexpressed in cancer cells give rise to the release of Dox and 6MP, respectively. Thus, the change of the CMR fluorescence signal and the SERS decrease of 6MP can be used to monitor the dual-drug release within living cells in real time. In addition, this work demonstrates the enhanced anticancer effect of the designed dual-drug loaded nanosystem. Therefore, the current study may provide new perspectives for the real-time study of intelligent multi-drug delivery and release, as well as cellular responses to drug treatment.

A multifunctional nanocomposite for luminescence resonance energy transfer-guided synergistic monitoring and therapy under single near infrared light

In this report, we successfully implemented multiple functions into one nanocomposite, including the dual-mode monitoring of drug release and synergistic photothermal chemotherapy.