Screening for Combination Cancer Therapies With Dynamic Fuzzy Modeling and Multi-Objective Optimization

MPFFPSDC: A multi-pooling feature fusion model for predicting synergistic drug combinations

Drug combination therapies are common practice in the treatment of cancer, but not all combinations result in synergy. As traditional screening approaches are restricted in their ability to uncover synergistic drug combinations, computer-aided medicine is becoming a increasingly prevalent in this field. In this work, a predictive model of potential interactions between drugs named MPFFPSDC is presented, which can maintain the symmetry of drug inputs and eliminate inconsistencies in predictive results caused by different drug inputting sequences or positions. The experimental results show that MPFFPSDC outperforms comparative models in major performance indicators and exhibits better generalization for independent data. Furthermore, the case study demonstrates that our model can capture molecular substructures that contribute to the synergistic effect of two drugs. These results indicate that MPFFPSDC not only offers strong predictive performance, but also has good model interpretability that may provide new insights for the study of drug interaction mechanisms and the development of new drugs.

Light-initiated aggregation of gold nanoparticles for synergistic chemo-photothermal tumor therapy

The combination of chemotherapy with photothermal therapy (PTT) has attracted extensive attention due to its excellent synergetic effect attributing to the fact that hyperthermia can effectively promote the tumor uptake of chemotherapeutic drugs. Herein, we propose a light-initiated gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation boosting the uptake of chemotherapeutic drugs for enhanced chemo-photothermal tumor therapy. Novel light-responsive AuNPs (tm-AuNPs) were rationally designed and fabricated by conjugating both 2,5-diphenyltetrazole (Tz) and methacrylic acid (Ma) onto the surface of AuNPs with small size (∼20 nm). Upon the irradiation of 405 nm laser, AuNPs could be initiated to form aggregates specifically within tumors through the covalent cycloaddition reaction between Tz and Ma. Taking advantage of the controllable photothermal effect of Au aggregates under NIR excitation, improved enrichment of doxorubicin (DOX) in tumor tissues was realized, combined with PTT, resulting in outstanding synergetic anti-tumor efficacy in living mice. We thus believe that this light-initiated AuNP aggregation approach would offer a valuable and powerful tool for precisely synergistic chemo-photothermal tumor therapy.

Combinational therapeutics to combat cancer

Mono-therapeutics is rarely effective as a treatment option, which limits the survival of patients in advanced grade aggressive cancers. Combinational therapeutics (multiple drugs for multiple targets) to combat cancer is gaining momentum in recent years. Hence, it is of interest to document known data for combinational therapeutics in cancer treatment. An amalgamation of therapeutic agents enhances the efficacy and potency of the therapy. Combinational therapy can potentially target multiple pathways that are necessary for the cancer cells to proliferate, and/or target molecules, which may help cancer to become more aggressive and metastasize. In this review, we discuss combinational therapeutics, which include human γδ T cells in combinations with biologically active anti-cancer molecules, which synergistically may produce promising combinational therapeutics.