Biomineralization: An Opportunity and Challenge of Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Systems for Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Biomineralization is a common process in organisms to produce hard biomaterials by combining inorganic ions with biomacromolecules. Multifunctional nanoplatforms are developed based on the mechanism of biomineralization in many biomedical applications. In the past few years, biomineralization-based nanoparticle drug delivery systems for the cancer treatment have gained a lot of research attention due to the advantages including simple preparation, good biocompatibility, degradability, easy modification, versatility, and targeting. In this review, the research trends of biomineralization-based nanoparticle drug delivery systems and their applications in cancer therapy are summarized. This work aims to promote future researches on cancer therapy based on biomineralization. Rational design of nanoparticle drug delivery systems can overcome the bottleneck in the clinical transformation of nanomaterials. At the same time, biomineralization has also provided new research ideas for cancer treatment, i.e., targeted therapy, which has significantly better performance.

pH-responsive hollow Fe–gallic acid coordination polymer for multimodal synergistic-therapy and MRI of cancer

“…20,21 Especially, biodegradability of nanomaterial carriers is a critical challenge in future clinical applications. 22 The coordination polymer consisting of Fe(III) and gallic acid (GA) has been widely used in drug delivery, 23 in which Fe(III) is coordinated with the -COOH of GA in unsaturated modality. 24,25 It can gradually degrade in response to the weakly acidic tumor microenvironment (TME), 26 and be effectively excreted from the body without causing long-term retention and toxicity problems.…”

“… 20,21 Especially, biodegradability of nanomaterial carriers is a critical challenge in future clinical applications. 22 …”

Prussian Blue/Calcium Peroxide Nanocomposites-Mediated Tumor Cell Iron Mineralization for Treatment of Experimental Lung Adenocarcinoma

“…Biomineralization features the enrichment of inorganic ions on organic substrates to form hard tissue materials, , which plays an important role in the formation of hard tissue in living bodies, such as the physiological formation of bone and teeth . Calcification is one of the common biomineralization types in mammalian cells, which usually is initially mediated at the mitochondrial level, as mitochondrial calcification is considered an important physiological process that protects cells from calcium-induced cytotoxicity .…”

Carboranes as unique pharmacophores in antitumor medicinal chemistry

“…63 Nanoparticle delivery systems can potentially improve the efficacy and reduce the toxicity of DOX. 64 , 65 , 66 , 69 The Yan group reported that DOX combined with nanoparticles reduced the toxicity in the treatment of liver cancer. 67 …”