Search

Clinical diagnosis of malignant tumors using nanoprobes needs severe improvements in the aspects of sensitivity and biocompatibility. Integrating a dual-targeting strategy with the selection of human-inherent elements and molecules as raw materials shows great potential in the development of a biosafe and sensitive nanoplatform. To carry out the proposed design, we constructed a biocompatible, dual-targeting MR imaging nanoprobe, based on Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) co-modified with inherently innoxious hyaluronic acid (HA) and transferrin (Tf). HA was used as both a template and a targeting molecule to form Fe3O4@HA NPs through a one-step co-precipitation method, which were then further modified with Tf to obtain the dual-targeting Fe3O4@HA@Tf NPs at room temperature. The excellent biocompatibility of the nanoprobe was demonstrated via toxicity assays in vitro and in vivo. The desirable dual-targeting ability towards tumor cells was confirmed by a cellular uptake test (Hela cells, overexpressing both CD44 and transferrin receptors), and the developed nanoprobe was successfully applied in tumor-targeted MR imaging in vivo. In summation, we developed a dual-targeting Fe3O4 nanoprobe, following a facile procedure at room temperature. The nanoprobe showed a high targeting ability towards tumor cells and excellent biocompatibility, which showed its great potential to be applied in the clinical diagnosis of tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photothermal therapy as a physical therapeutic approach has greatly attracted research interest due to its negligible systemic effects. Among the various photothermal agents, CuS nanoparticles have been widely used due to their easy preparation, low cost, high stability and strong absorption in the NIR region. However, the ambiguous biotoxicity of CuS nanoparticles limited their bio-application. So it is highly desirable to develop biocompatible CuS photothermal agents with the potential of clinical translation. Herein, we report a novel method to synthesize biocompatible CuS nanoparticles for photothermal therapy using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a template via mimicking biomaterialization processes. Owing to the inherent biocompatibility of BSA, the toxicity assays in vitro and in vivo showed that BSA–CuS nanoparticles possessed good biocompatibility. In vitro and in vivo photothermal therapies were performed and good results were obtained. The bulk of the HeLa cells treated with BSA–CuS nanoparticles under laser irradiation (808 nm) were killed, and the tumor tissues of mice were also successfully eliminated without causing any obvious systemic damage. In summary, a novel strategy for the synthesis of CuS nanoparticles was developed using BSA as the template, and the excellent biocompatibility and efficient photothermal therapy effects of BSA–CuS nanoparticles show great potential as an ideal photothermal agent for cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]