Carbon nanotubes in cancer therapy: a more precise look at the role of carbon nanotube–polymer interactions

Abstract

Despite the great potential of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in various areas of biomedicine, concerns regarding their carcinogenicity, inefficient dispersion in aqueous solutions and biological activity in vivo still remain. One important and feasible route to overcome these barriers is modification of CNTs with polymers, which are widely studied and play a vital role in biological and biomedical fields, especially in drug delivery. This comprehensive review focuses on the achievements of our and other groups in currently used methods to functionalize the surface of CNTs with polymers to produce anticancer drug delivery systems. We have intensively studied covalent and noncovalent interactions between CNTs and linear, dendritic and hyperbranched biocompatible polymers as well as biomacromolecules interactions which are very crucial to diminish the toxicity of CNTs via changing their conformations.

Complexation of aromatic drugs with single-walled carbon nanotubes

“…Knowledge of the magnitudes of the binding constants, K, may be used to correlate their values with the physicochemical or biological effect under study induced by complexation of the ligand with SWCNT, and to get insight into energetics of binding. In particular, the ability to categorize various drugs by their affinity to SWCNT may be important in construction of novel CNT-based tumor-targeted drug delivery systems, which are currently considered to be a promising approach in antitumor therapy (Adeli et al 2013). It was, however, shown in the present paper that a comparative analysis of the equilibrium constants for different ligands is only reliable if the method of preparation of SWCNT suspension is the same for all the ligands involved in the study.…”

“…Applications have appeared in molecular electronics (Avouris 2002;Cao et al 2013;Ogloblya et al 2010), nanobiotechnology (Andreichenko et al 2012;Ge et al 2011;Liu et al 2009a;Prylutska et al 2013), biosensorics (Ogloblya et al 2009;Panchapakesan et al 2012;Wang et al 2003), cancer therapy (Ali-Boucetta et al 2008;Adeli et al 2013;Burlaka et al 2010;Liu et al 2009b) etc.…”

“…In particular, the adsorption of drug on CNT surface results in lowering of its active concentration in solution thereby limiting its binding with bioreceptor (Ali-Boucetta et al 2008;Liu et al 2009b). Ligand-CNT complexes also provide a method to transfer CNTs into liquid state (Nakashima 2006;Qin et al 2004;Shen et al 2012), or as the means to deliver surface-adsorbed drugs to a biological receptor (Adeli et al 2013;Assali et al 2013;Liu et al 2007Liu et al , 2009a; Pastorin et al 2006). Nowadays, several novel CNT-based tumortargeted drug delivery systems have been developed demonstrating ability to suppress proliferation of cancer cells, thus providing a new promising approach in antitumor therapy (Adeli et al 2013;Chen et al 2008).…”

“…Ligand-CNT complexes also provide a method to transfer CNTs into liquid state (Nakashima 2006;Qin et al 2004;Shen et al 2012), or as the means to deliver surface-adsorbed drugs to a biological receptor (Adeli et al 2013;Assali et al 2013;Liu et al 2007Liu et al , 2009a; Pastorin et al 2006). Nowadays, several novel CNT-based tumortargeted drug delivery systems have been developed demonstrating ability to suppress proliferation of cancer cells, thus providing a new promising approach in antitumor therapy (Adeli et al 2013;Chen et al 2008). As a consequence, investigations of CNT complexation with antibiotics (Ji et al 2009(Ji et al , 2010Wang et al 2009), dyes (Chagovets et al 2012;Gupta et al 2013;Koh et al 2012;Kuo et al 2008;Liu et al 2008;Machado et al 2012;Yao et al 2010), and other types of ligands (Pan and Xing 2008;Yan et al 2008;Yang and Xing 2010), have been undertaken with an aim to determine the binding parameters in solution.…”

Advanced targeted therapies in cancer: Drug nanocarriers, the future of chemotherapy

“…There are no FDA approvals or clinical trials in process up to date using carbon nanotubes, although the encouraging preclinical results in vitro and in vivo in cancer treatment via passive targeting show that this structures are promising nanocarriers for cancer treatment [18,126,296,297,300,[307][308][309][310][311][312][313][314][315][316]. Active tumor targeting has been rarely reported in vivo [300,317,318], usually without drug loading [301,303,319].…”