Nanomedicine for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer

Fucoidan-mediated targeted delivery of dasatinib-loaded nanoparticles amplifies apoptosis and endows cytotoxic potential in triple-negative breast cancer

Dasatinib (DST) is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor with established antiproliferative activity in Triple-negative breast cancer. Conventional treatment strategies with DST have several pitfalls related to the development of resistance, lower cellular uptake and unwanted adverse effects. To address these issues, we have prepared P-selectin-targeted nanoparticles of DST with fucoidan (FUC) as a ligand. Poly lactide-co-glycolide nanoparticles of DST were coated with chitosan (CH) and FUC via electrostatic interaction (DST-CH-FUC-NPs). The mean particle size of 210.36 ± 0.66 nm and a polydispersity index of 0.234 ± 0.013 was observed for DST-CH-FUC-NPs. TEM and FTIR analysis proved CH coating followed by an FUC layer on nanoparticles. DST-CH-FUC-NPs showed a sustained release profile up to 120 h and 2.9 times less hemolytic potential than free DST suspension. DST-CH-FUC-NPs demonstrated 8-fold higher cytotoxicity compared to free DST in MDA-MB-231 cells. Rhodamine-CH-FUC- NPs showed 19 times and 3 times higher cellular uptake than free Rhodamine and Rhodamine-CH-NPs, respectively. DST-CH-FUC-NPs also displayed increased ROS production and mitochondrial membrane potential damage. Apoptosis study revealed a 7.5-fold higher apoptosis index for DST-CH-FUC-NPs than free DST. Subsequently, the DST-CH-FUC-NPs showed increased inhibition of cell migration, where approximately 5 % wound closure was noted. Further, DST-CH-FUC-NPs confirmed higher disruption of lysosomal membrane integrity, which is well correlated with apoptosis results. In addition, developed NPs were nontoxic on MCF 10 A normal cells. All these findings suggest that fabricated DST-CH-FUC-NPs are promising biocompatible carriers for tumor-targeted delivery and enhanced efficacy of dasatinib.

Potential Role of Carbon Nanomaterials in the Treatment of Malignant Brain Gliomas

Malignant gliomas are the most common primary brain tumors in adults up to an extent of 78% of all primary malignant brain tumors. However, total surgical resection is almost unachievable due to the considerable infiltrative ability of glial cells. The efficacy of current multimodal therapeutic strategies is, furthermore, limited by the lack of specific therapies against malignant cells, and, therefore, the prognosis of these in patients is still very unfavorable. The limitations of conventional therapies, which may result from inefficient delivery of the therapeutic or contrast agent to brain tumors, are major reasons for this unsolved clinical problem. The major problem in brain drug delivery is the presence of the blood-brain barrier, which limits the delivery of many chemotherapeutic agents. Nanoparticles, thanks to their chemical configuration, are able to go through the blood-brain barrier carrying drugs or genes targeted against gliomas. Carbon nanomaterials show distinct properties including electronic properties, a penetrating capability on the cell membrane, high drug-loading and pH-dependent therapeutic unloading capacities, thermal properties, a large surface area, and easy modification with molecules, which render them as suitable candidates for deliver drugs. In this review, we will focus on the potential effectiveness of the use of carbon nanomaterials in the treatment of malignant gliomas and discuss the current progress of in vitro and in vivo researches of carbon nanomaterials-based drug delivery to brain.

Emerging Nanotherapeutic Approaches to Overcome Drug Resistance in Cancers with Update on Clinical Trials

A key issue with modern cancer treatments is the emergence of resistance to conventional chemotherapy and molecularly targeted medicines. Cancer nanotherapeutics were created in order to overcome the inherent limitations of traditional chemotherapeutics. Over the last few decades, cancer nanotherapeutics provided unparalleled opportunities to understand and overcome drug resistance through clinical assessment of rationally designed nanoparticulate delivery systems. In this context, various design strategies such as passive targeting, active targeting, nano-drug, and multimodal nano-drug combination therapy provided effective cancer treatment. Even though cancer nanotherapy has made great technological progress, tumor biology complexity and heterogeneity and a lack of comprehensive knowledge of nano-bio interactions remain important roadblocks to future clinical translation and commercialization. The current developments and advancements in cancer nanotherapeutics employing a wide variety of nanomaterial-based platforms to overcome cancer treatment resistance are discussed in this article. There is also a review of various nanotherapeutics-based approaches to cancer therapy, including targeting strategies for the tumor microenvironment and its components, advanced delivery systems for specific targeting of cancer stem cells (CSC), as well as exosomes for delivery strategies, and an update on clinical trials. Finally, challenges and the future perspective of the cancer nanotherapeutics to reverse cancer drug resistance are discussed.

Bioactive nanotherapeutic trends to combat triple negative breast cancer

The management of aggressive breast cancer, particularly, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains a formidable challenge, despite treatment advancement. Although newer therapies such as atezolizumab, olaparib, and sacituzumab can tackle the breast cancer prognosis and/or progression, but achieved limited survival benefit(s). The current research efforts are aimed to develop and implement strategies for improved bioavailability, targetability, reduce systemic toxicity, and enhance therapeutic outcome of FDA-approved treatment regimen. This review presents various nanoparticle technology mediated delivery of chemotherapeutic agent(s) for breast cancer treatment. This article also documents novel strategies to employ cellular and cell membrane cloaked (biomimetic) nanoparticles for effective clinical translation. These technologies offer a safe and active targeting nanomedicine for effective management of breast cancer, especially TNBC.

Synergistic Effect of Photothermally Targeted NIR-Responsive Nanomedicine-Induced Immunogenic Cell Death for Effective Triple Negative Breast Cancer Therapy

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype. At present, TNBC patients do not have approved targeted therapy. Therefore, patients primarily depend on forceful systemic chemotherapy that has unavoidable harmful side effects, resulting in inadequate therapeutic outcomes and leading to a high mortality rate. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop targeted therapies for the TNBC populace. Developing a new nanotherapeutic approach of combinational therapy could be an effective alternative strategy. Therefore, we designed a combination of hyaluronan (HA)-polyaniline (PANi)-imiquimod (R837), denoted as HA-PANi/R837, nanoparticles (NPs) that exhibited a high extinction coefficient of 8.23 × 10⁸ M^-1 cm^-1 and adequate photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE) (η = 41.6%), making them an efficient photothermal agent (PTA) that is highly beneficial for selective CD44-mediated photothermal ablation of TNBC tumors. Furthermore, co-encapsulation of R837 (toll-like receptor 7 agonist) immunoadjuvant molecules triggers an immune response against the tumor. The formed CD44-targeted HA-PANi/R837 NPs' selectivity incinerates the tumor under near-infrared (NIR)-triggered photothermal ablation, generating tumor-associated antigens and triggering R837 combination with anti-CTLA-4 for immunogenic cell death (ICD) activation to kill the remaining tumor cells in mice and protect against tumor relapse and metastasis. Our results demonstrated that novel HA-PANi/R837 NP-induced photothermal ICD achieved in CD44-targeted TNBC is a promising application.

Physiologically based kinetic modelling based prediction of in vivo rat and human acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition upon exposure to diazinon

The present study predicts in vivo human and rat red blood cell (RBC) acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition upon diazinon (DZN) exposure using physiological based kinetic (PBK) modelling-facilitated reverse dosimetry. Due to the fact that both DZN and its oxon metabolite diazoxon (DZO) can inhibit AChE, a toxic equivalency factor (TEF) was included in the PBK model to combine the effect of DZN and DZO when predicting in vivo AChE inhibition. The PBK models were defined based on kinetic constants derived from in vitro incubations with liver fractions or plasma of rat and human, and were used to translate in vitro concentration-response curves for AChE inhibition obtained in the current study to predicted in vivo dose-response curves. The predicted dose-response curves for rat matched available in vivo data on AChE inhibition, and the benchmark dose lower confidence limits for 10% inhibition (BMDL10 values) were in line with the reported BMDL10 values. Humans were predicted to be 6-fold more sensitive than rats in terms of AChE inhibition, mainly because of inter-species differences in toxicokinetics. It is concluded that the TEF-coded DZN PBK model combined with quantitative in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (QIVIVE) provides an adequate approach to predict RBC AChE inhibition upon acute oral DZN exposure, and can provide an alternative testing strategy for derivation of a point of departure (POD) in risk assessment.

Cancer nanomedicine: mechanisms, obstacles and strategies

Targeting nanoparticles to cancers for improved therapeutic efficacy and decreased side effects remains a popular concept in the past decades. Although the enhanced permeability and retention effect serves as a key rationale for all the currently commercialized nanoformulations, it does not enable uniform delivery of nanoparticles to all tumorous regions in all patients with sufficient quantities. Also, the increase in overall survival is often modest. Many factors may influence the delivering process of nanoparticles, which must be taken into consideration for the promise of nanomedicine in patients to be realized. Herein, we review the mechanisms and influencing factors during the delivery of cancer therapeutics and summarize current strategies that have been developed for the fabrication of smart drug delivery systems.

Cytotoxic Effects of Phosphonate-Functionalized Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles

In this work, we synthesized pristine mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) and functionalized these with phosphonate groups (MSN-Phos). We report, for the first time, cell death in MCF-7 cells (human breast adenocarcinoma cell line) when exposed to the empty MSN and MSN-Phos nanoparticles. In comparison, the same nanoparticles were found to elicit few deleterious effects on normal human foreskin fibroblast cells (BJ cells). MCF-7 cells were found to exhibit a concentration-dependent uptake, whereas no detectable nanoparticle uptake was observed in the BJ cells, irrespective of treatment dosage. A disruption of the cell cycle in the MCF-7 cells was determined to be the cause of cell death from the nanoparticle exposure, thereby suggesting the role of nondrug loaded MSN and MSN-Phos as effective anticancer drugs.

Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Nanosolutions for a Big Challenge

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a particular immunopathological subtype of breast cancer that lacks expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors (ER/PR) and amplification of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene. Characterized by aggressive and metastatic phenotypes and high rates of relapse, TNBC is the only breast cancer subgroup still lacking effective therapeutic options, thus presenting the worst prognosis. The development of targeted therapies, as well as early diagnosis methods, is vital to ensure an adequate and timely therapeutic intervention in patients with TNBC. This review intends to discuss potentially emerging approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of TNBC patients, with a special focus on nano-based solutions that actively target these particular tumors.

Targeted and controlled drug delivery using a temperature and ultra-violet responsive liposome with excellent breast cancer suppressing ability

Drug delivery systems (DDS) with favorable serum stability, high intra-tumor accumulation and tumor specific drug release are highly desired for promoting chemotherapeutic efficacy.

Bio-NCs--the marriage of ultrasmall metal nanoclusters with biomolecules

Ultrasmall metal nanoclusters (NCs) have attracted increasing attention due to their fascinating physicochemical properties. Today, functional metal NCs are finding growing acceptance in biomedical applications. To achieve a better performance in biomedical applications, metal NCs can be interfaced with biomolecules, such as proteins, peptides, and DNA, to form a new class of biomolecule-NC composites (or bio-NCs in short), which typically show synergistic or novel physicochemical and physiological properties. This feature article focuses on the recent studies emerging at the interface of metal NCs and biomolecules, where the interactions could impart unique physicochemical properties to the metal NCs, as well as mutually regulate biological functions of the bio-NCs. In this article, we first provide a broad overview of key concepts and developments in the novel biomolecule-directed synthesis of metal NCs. A special focus is placed on the key roles of biomolecules in metal NC synthesis. In the second part, we describe how the encapsulated metal NCs affect the structure and function of biomolecules. Followed by that, we discuss several unique synergistic effects observed in the bio-NCs, and illustrate them with examples highlighting their potential biomedical applications. Continued interdisciplinary efforts are required to build up in-depth knowledge about the interfacial chemistry and biology of bio-NCs, which could further pave their ways toward biomedical applications.