Black Phosphorus Nanosheet-Loaded Traditional Chinese Medicine Curcumin for Acute Rhinosinusitis Therapy and Its Mechanism

Abstract

Acute rhinosinusitis is among the most prevalent disease across the world. Recently, researchers have found that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) can effectively treat acute rhinosinusitis. Nanomaterial-based drug delivery systems (DDSs) have attracted widespread attention in disease treatment. In this work, we herein reported curcumin-loading black phosphorus nanosheet (BP-C@PEG) nanodrugs for acute rhinosinusitis therapy. The as-prepared BP-C@PEG showed excellent solubility and stability in aqueous solution and performed sustained release behavior. In addition, it also exhibited good anti-inflammatory action for the treatment of acute rhinosinusitis. The antiinflammation mechanism of BP-C@PEG was also studied. We found that LPS-induced inflammation in nasal epithelial cells was eased through downregulating HDAC3 and NLRP3 inflammasomes and lowering IL-1β levels. Moreover, the in vivo experiments verified that BP-C@PEG could effectively alleviate the cilium injury and the recruitment of inflammatory cells in the nasal mucosa of mice, further demonstrating its promising therapeutic efficiency in acute rhinosinusitis. Overall, this study provides a potential approach for acute rhinosinusitis therapy by using BP-C@PEG nanodrugs, which may broaden the application of TCM in the biomedical field.