Design of Bio-Graphene-Based Multifunctional Nanocomposites Exhibits Intracellular Drug Delivery in Cervical Cancer Treatment

Abstract

The advent of bio-nanotechnology has revolutionized nanodrug delivery by improving drug efficacy and safety. Nevertheless, acceptable carriers for therapeutic molecules are one of the most difficult challenges in drug delivery. Graphene material-based (GMB) and polymer-based drug-loaded nanocarriers have both demonstrated clinical advantages in delivering drugs of interest in vitro/in vivo. Cisplatin (CDDP) is an inorganic chemotherapeutic drug that is commonly used to treat a variety of cancers. However, its clinical use is associated with drug resistance and few side effects, which reduces its antitumor effects. Therefore, we developed a CDDP-loaded chitosan-functionalized graphene oxide nanocomposite (CDDP@CS-GO NC)-based nanodrug delivery system (NDDS). Flow cytometry and confocal imaging show that the CDDP@CS-GO NCs lead to significantly increased intracellular drug accumulation in tumor cells. Cancer cells take up the nanocomposite via endocytosis and can generate intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) to increase mitochondrial membrane potential loss (Δψm) and enable cytochrome-c release, followed by the dysregulation of Bcl-2 into the cytosol and activation of caspase-3 to induce cancer cell apoptosis. In vitro experiments demonstrated the excellent cancer therapeutic effect with few side effects of the carriers. CDDP@CS-GO NCs are expected to play an important role in responsive NDDSs for cancer therapy.

Graphene in 3D Bioprinting

“…Thus, further research needs to be conducted to unravel how graphene is metabolized in the body. Finally, those limitations dictate the need to develop new bio-graphene inks [188,189], which may be utilized for generating 3D printed tissue engineered scaffolds with advanced regenerative and restoration capacity [190].…”

Graphene family in cancer therapy: recent progress in cancer gene/drug delivery applications

“…CDDP has been used to treat several human tumors but has sometimes failed due to the drug resistance of many tumors. 171 This issue has been addressed in a study conducted by Vasanthakumar and coworkers, 172 who have constructed a nanocarrier by functionalizing GO with chitosan and CDDP. This nanocarrier was capable of causing apoptosis by entering the cancer cells through endocytosis, producing ROS to initiate cytochrome C release from mitochondria and caspase-3 activation through Bcl-2 deregulation.…”

QPI assay of fibroblasts resilience to adverse effects of nanoGO clusters by multimodal and multiscale microscopy

“…In fact, the π-conjugated structure of GO can be used for capturing drug molecules through π-π stacking interactions or by efficient covalent bonding [7], thus making it an interesting choice as a nanocarrier for biochemical molecules [11][12][13][14]. nGO is nowadays considered as the next generation of carbon materials that will be used as anticancer therapeutic agent [15][16][17][18][19][20].…”