Multiple Treatment of Triple‐Negative Breast Cancer Through Gambogic Acid‐Loaded Mesoporous Polydopamine

Abstract

Triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous subtype of breast cancer, characterized by aggressiveness and high recurrence rate. As monotherapy provides limited benefit to TNBC patients, combination therapy emerges as a promising treatment approach. Gambogic acid (GA) is an exceedingly promising anticancer agent. Nonetheless, its application potential is hampered by low drug loading efficiency and associated toxic side effects. To overcome these limitations, using mesoporous polydopamine (MPDA) endowed with photothermal conversion capabilities is considered as a delivery vehicle for GA. Meanwhile, GA can inhibit the activity of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) to enhance the photothermal effect. Herein, GA‐loaded MPDA nanoparticles (GA@MPDA NPs) are developed with a high drug loading rate of 75.96% and remarkable photothermal conversion performance. GA@MPDA NPs combined with photothermal treatment (PTT) significantly inhibit the tumor growth, and effectively trigger the immunogenic cell death (ICD), which thereby increase the number of activated effector T cells (CD8+ T cells and CD4+ T cells) in the tumor, and hoist the level of immune‐inflammatory cytokines (IFN‐γ, IL‐6, and TNF‐α). The above results suggest that the combination of GA@MPDA NPs with PTT expected to activate the antitumor immune response, thus potentially enhancing the clinical therapeutic effect on TNBC.

Heteroatom Doping Promoted Ultrabright and Ultrastable Photoluminescence of Water-Soluble Au/Ag Nanoclusters for Visual and Efficient Drug Delivery to Cancer Cells

“…In the past decades, drug-carrying nanomaterials, such as hydrogels, , peptides, , metal NCs, − and carbon-based quantum dots, have attracted wide attention and demonstrated the validity in improving the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution by protecting their active cargo from degradation and promoting its effective release and therapy efficiency to cancer cells. − Comparatively, hydrophilic metal NCs are much more suitable for drug delivery purposes due to their nontoxicity, ultrasmall size, strong PL, high penetration capability, and good pharmacokinetics similar to those of small molecules in vivo . However, many metal NCs usually suffer from a low stability of physicochemical properties in vivo , limiting their practical application in clinical therapy .…”