( The drug-loaded, transferrin and poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) functionalized gold nanoshells on silica nanorattles (pGSNs-Doc-Tf) can combine the active targeting, passive targeting, remote-controlled photothermal therapy with chemotherapy together to completely kill tumor cells via a single NIR light irradiation. Image by Liu H.Y. Liu and Tang Fangqiong)
One of the current challenges in biomedicine is to develop safe and effective nanomedicine for selective tumor therapy. Recently, near-infrared (NIR) light absorbing plasmonic nanomaterials have provided new opportunities for localized hyperthermia therapy. Although attempts have been made to apply gold-based NIR absorbing materials in cancer therapy, the technology remains unsatisfactory due to the required long NIR light irradiation time, high NIR laser light irradiation intensity as well as repeated injections and NIR laser light irradiations.
In order to find a more efficient drug delivery strategy, a research team led by TANG Fangqiong from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences engineered a kind of Transferrin (Tf) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) functionalied gold nanoshells on silica nanorattles for breast tumor ablation. Tf, one of the widely used targeting ligand, has been used to enhance the cellular uptake of gold nanoparticles as many cancer cell types have abundant expression of Tf receptors. The nanostructures consist of a thin gold nanoshell and a monodispersed mesoporous silica nanorattle core. This kind of plasmonic nanomaterial exhibits a strong optical extinction at near-infrared wavelengths. In vivo experiments of mice, the gold nanoshells can transfer the thermal energy to the surrounding medium or tissue and slowly release their payload to ablate tumor cells by single irradiation with NIR laser light.
The drug-loaded, transferrin and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-functionalized gold nanoshellson silica nanorattles (pGSNs-Doc-Tf) can combine the active targeting, passive targeting, remote-controlled photothermal therapy together with chemotherapy to completely kill tumor cells via a single irradiation with near-infrared laser light. This work was published on Advanced Materials recently. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201103343/pdf)
