Carbon Nanotubes: An Emerging Drug Carrier for Targeting Cancer Cells

Abstract

During recent years carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been attracted by many researchers as a drug delivery carrier. CNTs are the third allotropic form of carbon-fullerenes which were rolled into cylindrical tubes. To be integrated into the biological systems, CNTs can be chemically modified or functionalised with therapeutically active molecules by forming stable covalent bonds or supramolecular assemblies based on noncovalent interactions. Owing to their high carrying capacity, biocompatibility, and specificity to cells, various cancer cells have been explored with CNTs for evaluation of pharmacokinetic parameters, cell viability, cytotoxicty, and drug delivery in tumor cells. This review attempts to highlight all aspects of CNTs which render them as an effective anticancer drug carrier and imaging agent. Also the potential application of CNT in targeting metastatic cancer cells by entrapping biomolecules and anticancer drugs has been covered in this review.

Anti-tumor effect of licochalcone-E is mediated by caspase-dependent apoptosis through extrinsic and intrinsic apoptotic signaling pathways in KB cancer cells

“…Recently, chemotherapy has demonstrated the greatest clinical efficacy among treatments for cancer patients [10]. However, despite the clinical efficacy of chemotherapy in treating cancer, clinical applications are often limited by various side effects, such as high toxicity to healthy cells and multidrug resistance, among other side effects [12]. Therefore, to discover new clinical applications of potential chemotherapeutic agents, recent drug development studies have focused on medicinal plants with known biological safety to overcome limitations imposed by negative side effects [11].…”

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“…[29,[31][32][33] Previously three drugs, namely, trastuzumab (in 1998), lapatinib (in 2007), and pertuzumab (in 2012) have been approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat HER2-positive BC. [34] Trastuzumab [ Figure 4a] a humanized anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody and lapatinib [ Figure 4b] is a twin RTK inhibitor that reduces both HER1 and HER2. [35,36] pertuzumab (humanized monoclonal antibody) binds to the extracellular domain of HER2.…”

Transactivator of transcription (TAT) peptide–chitosan functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes as a potential drug delivery vehicle for cancer therapy

“…Covalent functionalization is usually governed by oxidation of CNTs with strong acids which generates COOH or OH on the CNT surface. 15 CNTs can also noncovalently interact with various molecules through weak interactions such as surface adsorption, π-π stacking, electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding or van der Waals force. [16][17][18] Since covalent functionalization would definitely alter the electronic structure of CNTs, and hence might potentially affect their physical properties, noncovalent functionalization is more attractive as it offers the facility of associating functional groups with the CNT surface without changing the system of the grapheme lattice, and thus not modifying their electrical or physical properties.…”