New Research Develops a New X-ray Responsive Degradation Nano-drug Carrier System
Chemotherapy is a commonly used clinical treatment for tumors, but single-molecule chemotherapeutics have low bioavailability and large side effects, which could be a significant burden to patients and their families. Nanotechnology prepares single-molecule chemotherapeutic drugs into nanometer drugs, which can achieve tumor targeting and controllable release of chemotherapeutic drugs, thereby improving the therapeutic effect and reducing toxic and side effects, which is conducive to achieving high-efficiency and low-toxicity chemotherapy.
Mesoporous silica nanomaterials have the advantages of simple synthesis, controllable structure, good chemical tailoring and biocompatibility, and are a nano-medicine carrier platform with good clinical application prospects. According to the characteristics of micro-acid, hypoxia and high redox in the tumor microenvironment, researchers have developed a variety of intelligent mesoporous silica nanoccarriers that respond to the degradation of endogenous characteristics in the tumor microenvironment and trigger controllable drug release. To improve the controllability of drug release, it is still necessary to develop mesoporous silica nano-medicine carriers that can be degraded in response to regionally applied external stimuli such as light, sound, electricity, and magnetism.
Recently, on the basis of the research on the disselenium bridged mesoporous silicon material that was degraded responsively to redox dual stimulation in the early stage, a research team discovered that the material can be degraded with X-ray controllability. The researchers optimized the preparation process to obtain di-selenide bridged mesoporous silica with moderate particle size, pore size and selenium content, which is used to support the traditional chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. The nanomedicine has sensitive and controllable X-ray responsive degradation ability, and can cause rapid matrix disintegration and explosive drug release under low-dose X-ray (1 Gy) irradiation.
In order to improve the enrichment ability of nano-drugs at tumor sites, the researchers used bionic strategies to coat tumor cell membranes on the surface of the drugs, which improves the stability and prolongs blood circulation time, giving the materials better tumor targeting. In cell and animal models, the bionic nano-drug realizes low-dose X-ray-mediated high-efficiency chemotherapy and significantly reduces the toxic side effects of doxorubicin. This kind of treatment strategy can also induce the death of tumor cell immune prototype, so that the body produces a tumor-specific immune response. Combination with a PD‐L1 checkpoint blockade further enhances inhibition of tumor growth and metastasis with low systemic toxicity, achieving a better therapeutic effect on the metastatic tumor. Together, the findings show the promise of these biomimetic, radiation‐responsive diselenide‐bond‐bridged MONs in chemo‐immunotherapy.
About the Author
As a drug delivery company offering customized solutions for developing and producing new, biocompatible drug delivery systems, CD Bioparticles specializes in a range of formulation and drug delivery technologies, from conventional liposomes, PEGylated liposomes for drug delivery to polymer microspheres and nanoparticles for enhanced drug delivery. It also provides contract services of drug delivery formulation developments for basic research, formulation feasibility studies, process development and scale-up, formulation characterization, analytical and nonclinical services.
Reference：
- Shao, Dan, et al. Biomimetic Diselenide‐Bridged Mesoporous Organosilica Nanoparticles as an X‐ray‐Responsive Biodegradable Carrier for Chemo‐Immunotherapy.Advanced Materials 2020: 2004385.