The use of chemotherapeutic drugs in cancer therapy is often limited by problems with administration such as insolubility, inefficient biodistribution, lack of selectivity, and inability of the drug to cross cellular barriers. To overcome these limitations, various types of drug delivery systems have been explored, and recently, carbon nanotube (CNT) materials have also garnered attention in the area of drug delivery. In this study, we describe the preparation, characterization, and in vitro testing of a new ultra-short single-walled carbon nanotube (US-tube)-based drug delivery system for the treatment of cancer. In particular, the encapsulation of cisplatin (CDDP), a widely-used anticancer drug, within US-tubes has been achieved, and the resulting CDDP@US-tube material characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and inductively-coupled optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). Dialysis studies performed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at 37 °C have demonstrated that CDDP release from CDDP@US-tubes can be controlled (retarded) by wrapping the CDDP@US-tubes with Pluronic-F108 surfactant. Finally, the anticancer activity of pluronic-wrapped CDDP@US-tubes has been evaluated against two different breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, and found to exhibit enhanced cytotoxicity over free CDDP after 24 hours. These studies have laid the foundation for developing US-tube-based delivery of chemotherapeutics, with drug release mainly limited to within cancer cells only.
Iron oxide nanoparticles are formidable multifunctional systems capable of contrast enhancement in magnetic resonance imaging; guidance under remote fields; heat generation; and biodegradation. Yet, this potential is underutilized in that each function manifests at different nanoparticle sizes. Here, sub-micrometer discoidal magnetic nanoconstructs are realized by confining 5 nm ultra-small super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (USPIOs) within two different mesoporous structures, made out of silicon and polymers. These nanoconstructs exhibit transversal relaxivities up to ~10 times (r2 ~ 835 (mM·s)−1) higher than conventional USPIOs and, under external magnetic fields, collectively cooperate to amplify tumor accumulation. The boost in r2 relaxivity arises from the formation of mesoscopic USPIO clusters within the porous matrix, inducing a local reduction in water molecule mobility as demonstrated via molecular dynamics simulations. The cooperative accumulation under static magnetic field derives from the large amount of iron that can be loaded per nanoconstuct (up to ~ 65 fg) and the consequent generation of significant inter-particle magnetic dipole interactions. In tumor bearing mice, the silicon-based nanoconstructs provide MRI contrast enhancement at much smaller doses of iron (~ 0.5 mg of Fe/kg animal) as compared to current practice.
Porous silicon has been used for the delivery of therapeutic and imaging agents in several biomedical applications. Here, mesoporous silicon nanoconstructs (SiMPs) with a discoidal shape and a sub-micrometer size (1,000 × 400 nm) have been conjugated with gadolinium-tetraazacyclododecane tetraacetic acid Gd(DOTA) molecules and proposed as contrast agents for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The surface of the SiMPs with different porosities – small pore (SP: ~ 5 nm) and huge pore (HP: ~ 40 nm) – and of bulk, non-porous silica beads (1,000 nm in diameter) have been modified with covalently attached (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) groups, conjugated with DOTA molecules, and reacted with an aqueous solution of GdCl3. The resulting Gd(DOTA) molecules confined within the small pores of the Gd-SiMPs achieve longitudinal relaxivities r1 of ~ 17 (mM·s)−1, which is 4 times greater than for free Gd(DOTA). This enhancement is ascribed to the confinement and stable chelation of Gd(DOTA) molecules within the SiMP mesoporous matrix. The resulting nanoconstructs possess no cytotoxicity and accumulate in ovarian tumors up to 2% of the injected dose per gram tissue, upon tail vein injection. All together this data suggests that Gd-SiMPs could be efficiently used for MR vascular imaging in cancer and other diseases.
The present study demonstrates that highly water-dispersed graphene nanoribbons dispersed by carboxyphenylated substituents and conjugated to aquated Gd(3+) ions can serve as a high-performance contrast agent (CA) for applications in T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with relaxivity (r1,2) values outperforming currently-available clinical CAs by up to 16 times for r1 and 21 times for r2.
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