Calcium Phosphate Mineralized Black Phosphorous with Enhanced Functionality and Anticancer Bioactivity

Abstract

Biodegradable inorganic nanomaterials have opened new perspectives for cancer therapy due to their inherent anticancer activity. Black phosphorus nanosheets (BPs) with their unique bioactivity have recently been identified as promising cancer therapeutic agents but their application is hampered by the difficulty in surface functionalization. Herein, an in situ calcium phosphate (CaP) mineralization strategy is described to enhance the anticancer activity of BPs. By using BPs as the phosphate sources and growth templates, the synthesized CaP‐mineralized BPs (CaBPs) retain the intrinsic properties of BPs and at the same time have high loading capacities for various fluorophores to enable effective bioimaging and tracing. Compared to BPs, CaBPs exhibit enhanced and selective anticancer bioactivity due to the improved pH‐responsive degradation behavior and intracellular Ca2+ overloading in cancer cells. Furthermore, CaBPs specifically target mitochondria and cause structural damage, thus leading to mitochondria‐mediated apoptosis in cancer cells. After intravenous injection, CaBPs target orthotopic breast cancer cells to inhibit tumor growth without giving rise to adverse effects or toxicity. The results demonstrate the great potential of CaBPs as targeted anticancer agents and the CaP mineralization approach provides a versatile surface functionalization strategy for nanotherapeutic agents.

Degradable and Excretable Ultrasmall Transition Metal Selenide Nanodots for High‐Performance Computed Tomography Bioimaging‐Guided Photonic Tumor Nanomedicine in NIR‐II Biowindow

“…As the time prolonged to 3 days, most of Rh 3 Se 8 NDs could be excreted out of mice. And when time extended to 7 days, almost all the Rh 3 Se 8 NDs were cleared from the body, indicating that the clearance process was time‐dependent, which is similar to the behaviors of other ultrasmall and biodegradable nanomedicines such as MDNs, [ 47 ] CaBPs, [ 60 ] Cu 3 BiS 3 NDs, [ 61 ] Bi 2 O 2 Se QDs, [ 62 ] and 2D silicene nanosheets. [ 63 ] Besides, adequate GSH in the tumor microenvironment can induce the degradation of Rh 3 Se 8 NDs.…”

Ion Interference Therapy of Tumors Based on Inorganic Nanoparticles

“…Yu Bin Dong’s team proved that Ca 2+ overload and photodynamics can produce obvious synergistic killing effect by constructing a nanoscale covalent organic framework (NCOF)-based nanoagent, namely CaCO 3 @COF-BODIPY-2I@GAG, which is embedded with CaCO 3 nanoparticles (NPs) and has a surface decorated with BODIPY-2I as a photosensitizer (PS) and glycosaminoglycan (GAG) targeting agent for CD44 receptors on the digestive tract tumor cells [ 35 ]. Xue Feng Yu et al’s work significantly inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells through calcium overload by utilizing the prepared CaP mineralized black phosphorus material (CaBPs) [ 4 ]. CaBPs exhibit enhanced and selective anticancer bioactivity due to the improved pH-responsive degradation behavior and intracellular Ca 2+ overloading in cancer cells.…”

“…In order to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, such as systemic toxicity, multifarious nanoparticles were constructed as drug carriers to achieve targeted and sustained cancer therapy [ 3 ]. However, in such a pattern of treatment, some inherent properties of inorganic nanocarriers, such as the properties of absorbing hydrogen ions and releasing metal or nonmetal ions, sometimes seem to be ignored [ 4 ]. In the latest research, the released ions in different intracellular environments by inorganic nanoparticles have made a great contribution to inhibiting the activity of cancer cells and enhancing the therapeutic effect of chemotherapy.…”

“…However, the application of some small molecule carriers frequently used for ion interference therapy, often encounters obstacles, such as short internal circulation, dose-dependent toxicity, poor specific recognition ability and a low dose of ion release, which limits the effect of cancer treatment [ 7 ]. Based on this, inorganic nanoparticles such as Ca 2 O, ZnO, CaCO 3 , BPS (black phosphorus) and NaCl have been constructed for ion interference treatment, with the advantages of long internal circulation, efficient inhibition of tumor development, high biocompatibility and strong specific recognition ability (Table 1) [ 4 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Because of these advantages, ion interference therapy based on inorganic nanoparticles, as an emerging cancer treatment, represents strong competition for traditional cancer treatment.…”

Designing highly stable ferrous selenide-black phosphorus nanosheets heteronanostructure via P-Se bond for MRI-guided photothermal therapy

“…Among the photothermal reagents, BPs, as emerging two-dimensional materials [ 19 , 20 ], have unique properties such as huge surface area [ 21 ], high photothermal conversion efficiency [ 22 ], good biocompatibility [ 23 ] and eventual degradation to non-toxic phosphate or phosphonate, which have attracted increasing attention from researchers. Thus, BPs have been widely studied in antibacterial [ 24 , 25 ], wound healing [ 26 ], antitumor [ 27 – 31 ] and other diseases [ 32 , 33 ]. However, the lone pair electrons on the surface of BPs lead to high reactivity in air and water [ 34 ], which hindered the application of BP-based nanomaterials in the biomedical area.…”