Folate-conjugated gold nanoparticle as a new nanoplatform for targeted cancer therapy

Abstract

Conventional cancer treatment methods suffer from many limitations such as non-specificity and low efficacy in discrimination between healthy and cancer cells. Recent developments in nanotechnology have introduced novel and smart therapeutic nanomaterials that basically take advantage of various targeting approaches. Targeted nanomaterials selectively bind to the cancer cells and affect them with minor effects on healthy cells. Folic acid (folate) is an essential molecule in DNA synthesis pathway which is highly needed for cancer cell duplication. Some certain cancer cells overexpress folate receptors higher than normal cells, and this fact is the basis of folate targeting strategy. There are many publications reporting various folate conjugated nanomaterials among which folate-conjugated gold nanoparticles hold great promises in targeted cancer therapy. Gold nanoparticles have been identified as promising candidates for new cancer therapy modalities because of biocompatibility, easy synthesis and functionalization, chemo-physical stability, and optical tunable characteristics. In the last decade, there has been a significant explosion in gold nanoparticles research, with a rapid increase in publications related to the area of biomedicine. Although there are many reports published on "gold nanoparticles" and "folate targeting," there are a few reports on "folate-conjugated gold nanoparticles" in biomedical literature. This paper intends to review and illustrate the recent advances in biomedicine which have been designed on the basis of folate-conjugated gold nanoparticles.

Folic acid functionalized nanoparticles as pharmaceutical carriers in drug delivery systems

“…Also, this study focused on recent studies. In another study by Samadian, Hosseini‐Nami, Kamrava, Ghaznavi, and Shakeri‐Zadeh (), some of the specific aspects of FA‐functionalized gold NPs and their applications in therapeutic and diagnostic delivery systems were collected. However, this work is completely different from their work because in this study, different types of FA‐functionalized NPs (not just gold NPs) were investigated and different characteristics of different NPs were reviewed.…”

Nanoparticles as Theranostic Vehicles in Experimental and Clinical Applications—Focus on Prostate and Breast Cancer

“…Gold NPs (AuNPs) in the form of nano-cages, -spheres, -beacons, -stars, -shells, -seeds, -sheets, or nanorods is being evaluated in many different settings, for example, for both PCa and BC (Figure 2) [8,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141]. By changing the AuNPs’ shape, size, or surface characteristics it is possible to fine-tune their properties in order to maximize their applicability as a tool for cancer diagnosis, photo-dynamic/thermal therapy, therapy-drug carrier, radiotherapy drug enhancer, targeted gene therapy, or as a combined theranostic nanovehicle [142,143,144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152,153,154,155].…”

A Simple Add-and-Display Method for Immobilisation of Cancer Drug on His-tagged Virus-like Nanoparticles for Controlled Drug Delivery

“…The FA molecules conjugated to the His-tagged VLNPs would specifically target the particles to cancer cells expressing the folate receptor (FR). FR is highly expressed on the surface of cancer cells (up to 700 times) 16 , including ovary, uterus, kidney, colon, brain and lung cancers as compared with healthy cells 17–19 . In this study, we employed an ovarian carcinoma cell-line, OVCAR-3, expressing high level of FR to demonstrate the feasibility of Add-and-Display of DOX on the His-tagged VLNPs and FR-mediated drug delivery.…”