Radiation therapy is a powerful approach for treating pancreatic cancer, a representative refractory cancer with a high fatality rate, and efforts have been made to decrease the radiation dose and suppress the side effects related to damage to normal tissues during radiation therapy. Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) are known to possess radiosensitizing activity and low biotoxicity; however, Au NP-incorporated biomaterials have not been investigated as feasible radiosensitizers for use in vivo. Accordingly, in this study, Au NP-incorporated molecularly imprinted polymer microgels (Au-MIP microgels) were created as radiation sensitizers using a newly developed one-pot seeded precipitation polymerization method, and the radiation-sensitizing effects of the Au-MIP microgels were investigated in mice bearing pancreatic tumors. In mice injected with the Au-MIP microgels, tumor sizes were smaller than those in control mice injected with buffer solution when X-ray irradiation was performed. Furthermore, biotoxicity was not observed in mice injected with the Au-MIP microgels because of negligible body weight loss in these mice. Based on these findings, Au-MIP microgels may have applications as novel radiation sensitizers in radiation therapy.
Keywords: gold nanoparticles; microgel; pancreatic cancer; radiation therapy; radiosensitizer.