RESUMEN

Cancer remains one of the main causes of death in the world. Early diagnosis and effective cancer therapies are required to treat this pathology. Traditional therapeutic approaches are limited by lack of specificity and systemic toxicity. In this scenario, nanomaterials could overcome many limitations of conventional approaches by reducing side effects, increasing tumor accumulation and improving the efficacy of drugs. In the past few decades, carbon nanomaterials (i.e., fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and carbon dots) have attracted significant attention of researchers in various scientific fields including biomedicine due to their unique physical/chemical properties and biological compatibility and are among the most promising materials that have already changed and will keep changing human life. Recently, because of their functionalization and stability, carbon nanomaterials have been explored as a novel tool for the delivery of therapeutic cancer drugs. In this review, we present an overview of the development of carbon dot nanomaterials in the nanomedicine field by focusing on their synthesis, and structural and optical properties as well as their imaging, therapy and cargo delivery applications.

RESUMEN

One of the most promising applications of DNA origami is its use as an excellent evolution of nanostructured intelligent systems for drug delivery, but short in vivo lifetime and immune-activation are still major challenges to overcome. On the contrary, stealth liposomes have long-circulation time and are well tolerated by the immune system. To overcome DNA origami limitations, we have designed and synthesized a compact short tube DNA origami (STDO) of approximately 30 nm in length and 10 nm in width. These STDO are highly stable ≥48 h in physiological conditions without any postsynthetic modifications. The compact size of STDO precisely fits inside a stealthy liposome of about 150 nm and could efficiently remotely load doxorubicin in liposomes (LSTDO) without a pH driven gradient. We demonstrated that this innovative drug delivery system (DDS) has an optimal tumoral release and high biocompatible profiles opening up new horizons to encapsulate many other hydrophobic drugs.

RESUMEN

Nanoscience breakthroughs in almost every field of science and nanotechnologies make life easier in this era. Nanoscience and nanotechnology represent an expanding research area, which involves structures, devices, and systems with novel properties and functions due to the arrangement of their atoms on the 1-100 nm scale. The field was subject to a growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, and in turn, the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnologies contribute to almost every field of science, including physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering. Notably, in recent years nanotechnologies have been applied to human health with promising results, especially in the field of cancer treatment. To understand the nature of nanotechnology, it is helpful to review the timeline of discoveries that brought us to the current understanding of this science. This review illustrates the progress and main principles of nanoscience and nanotechnology and represents the pre-modern as well as modern timeline era of discoveries and milestones in these fields.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

BACKGROUND: Inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) including those derived from metals (e.g., gold, silver), semiconductors (e.g., quantum dots), carbon dots, carbon nanotubes, or oxides (e.g., iron oxide), have been deeply investigated recently for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in oncology. Compared to organic nanomaterials, inorganic NPs have several advantages and unique characteristics for better imaging and drug delivery. Still, only a limited number of inorganic NPs are translated into clinical practice. METHOD: In this review, we discuss the progression of inorganic NPs for cancer therapy and imaging, focusing our attention on opportunities, limitations and challenges for the main constituting nanomaterials, including metallic and magnetic NPs. In particular, the pre-clinical and clinical trials from the bench toward the clinic are here investigated. RESULTS: Over the last few decades, the development of wide range of NPs with the ability to tune size, composition and functionality, has provided an excellent resource for nanomedicine. Inorganic NPs provide a great opportunity as drug carriers, due to the easy modification of targeting molecules, the control of drug release by different stimuli, and the effective delivery to target sites, thus resulting in having an improved therapeutic efficacy and in reducing side effects. Inorganic NPs are investigated in preclinical and clinical studies for the detection, diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. The stability of inorganic NPs offers a potential advantage over the traditional delivery methods. Inorganic NPs could enhance and improve current imaging and diagnostic techniques, such as MRI or PET. Even though, they have not yet been approved for drug delivery applications, their ability to respond to external stimuli is now widely investigated in clinic. CONCLUSION: The successful translation of inorganic NPs to the clinic requires the development of a simple, safe, cost-effective, ecofriendly mode of synthesis, and a better understanding of the safety mechanisms, biodistribution and the pharmacokinetics of NPs. However, more attention should be given to concerns on long-term toxicity, carcinogenesis, immunogenicity, inflammation and tissue damage. Although, some inorganic NPs, which were apparently promising in the preclinical phase, were found not to be successful when translated to the clinic, several encouraging NPs are currently being developed for treatment and cancer care and for a wide variety of other diseases.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

BACKGROUND: The application of nanotechnology in the medical field is called nanomedicine. Nowadays, this new branch of science is a point of interest for many investigators due to the important advances in which we assisted in recent decades, in particular for cancer treatment. Cancer nanomedicine has been applied in different fields such as drug delivery, nanoformulation and nanoanalytical contrast reagents. Nanotechnology may overcome many limitations of conventional approaches by reducing the side effects, increasing tumor drug accumulation and improving the efficacy of drugs. In the last two decades, nanotechnology has rapidly developed, allowing for the incorporation of multiple therapeutics, sensing and targeting agents into nanoparticles (NPs) for developing new nanodevices capable to detect, prevent and treat complex diseases such as cancer. METHOD: In this review, we describe the main drug nanoformulations based on different types of organic NPs, the advantages that the new formulations present in comparison with their free drug counterparts and how nanodrugs have improved clinical care. We subdivided them into four main groups: polymeric NPs, liposomes, micelles and exosomes, a small subgroup that has only recently been used in clinical trials. RESULTS: The application of nanotechnology to pharmaceutical science has allowed us to build up nanosystems based on at least two stage vectors (drug/nanomaterial), which often shown better pharmacokinetics (PK), bioavailability and biodistribution. As a result of these advantages, the nanomaterials accumulate passively in the tumor (due to the enhanced permeability and retention, effect, EPR), thereby decreasing the side effects of free drug. Recently, many new drug formulations have been translated from bench to bedside. CONCLUSION: It is important to underline that the translation of nanomedicines from the basic research phase to clinical use in patients is not only expensive and time-consuming, but that it also requires appropriate funding. After many years spent in the design of innovative nanomaterials, it is now the time for the research to take into consideration the biological obstacles that nanodrugs have to overcome. Barriers such as the mononuclear phagocyte system, intratumoral pressure or multidrug resistance are regularly encountered when a cancer patient is treated, especially in the metastatic setting.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Nanomedicine requires intelligent and non-toxic nanomaterials for real clinical applications. Carbon materials possess interesting properties but with some limitations due to toxic effects. Interest in carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) is increasing because they are considered green materials with tunable optical properties, overcoming the problem of toxicity associated with quantum dots or nanocrystals, and can be utilized as smart drug delivery systems. Using black tea as a raw material, we synthesized CNPs with a narrow size distribution, tunable optical properties covering visible to deep red absorption, non-toxicity and easy synthesis for large-scale production. We utilized these CNPs to label subcellular structures such as exosomes. More importantly, these new CNPs can escape lysosomal sequestration and rapidly distribute themselves in the cytoplasm to release doxorubicin (doxo) with better efficacy than the free drug. The release of doxo from CNPs was optimal at low pH, similar to the tumour microenvironment. These CNPs were non-toxic in mice and reduced the tumour burden when loaded with doxo due to an improved pharmacokinetics profile. In summary, we created a new delivery system that is potentially useful for improving cancer treatments and opening a new window for tagging microvesicles utilized in liquid biopsies.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

DNA nanotechnology is an emerging and exciting field, and represents a forefront frontier for the biomedical field. The specificity of the interactions between complementary base pairs makes DNA an incredible building material for programmable and very versatile two- and three-dimensional nanostructures called DNA origami. Here, we analyze the DNA origami and DNA-based nanostructures as a drug delivery system. Besides their physical-chemical nature, we dissect the critical factors such as stability, loading capability, release and immunocompatibility, which mainly limit in vivo applications. Special attention was dedicated to highlighting the boundaries to be overcome to bring DNA nanostructures closer to the bedside of patients.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

In cancer therapy, it is imperative to increase the efficacy and reduce side effects of chemotherapeutic drugs. Nanotechnology offers the unique opportunity to overcome these barriers. In particular, in the last few years, DNA nanostructures have gained attention for their biocompatibility, easy customized synthesis and ability to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Here, an open-caged pyramidal DNA@Doxorubicin (Py-Doxo) nanostructure was constructed with 10 DNA sequences of 26-28 nucleotides for drug delivery to cancer cells. The synthesized DNA nanostructures are sufficiently stable in biological medium. Py-Doxo exhibited significantly enhanced cytotoxicity of the delivered doxorubicin to breast and liver cancer cells up to twofold compared to free doxorubicin. This study demonstrates the importance of the shape and structure of the designed transporter DNA nanostructures for biomedical applications.

Asunto(s)