Polyacrylic Acid Functionalized Co0.85Se Nanoparticles: An Ultrasmall pH-Responsive Nanocarrier for Synergistic Photothermal-Chemo Treatment of Cancer

Yan Ma; Xianwen Wang; Huajian Chen; Zhaohua Miao; Gang He; Junhong Zhou; Zhengbao Zha

doi:10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00878

Polyacrylic Acid Functionalized Co_0.85Se Nanoparticles: An Ultrasmall pH-Responsive Nanocarrier for Synergistic Photothermal-Chemo Treatment of Cancer

ACS Biomater Sci Eng. 2018 Feb 12;4(2):547-557. doi: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00878. Epub 2018 Jan 10.

Authors

Yan Ma¹, Xianwen Wang¹, Huajian Chen¹, Zhaohua Miao¹, Gang He¹, Junhong Zhou¹, Zhengbao Zha¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Biological and Medical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, No. 193 Tunxi road, Hefei, Anhui 230009, P. R. China.

PMID: 33418744
DOI: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00878

Abstract

To surmount the challenges of limited drug penetration and therapeutic resistance in solid tumors, stimuli-responsive nanocarrier-based drug delivery systems (DDSs) with relatively small sizes are inherently favorable for combined treatment of cancerous cells. In this work, poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) functionalized Co_0.85Se nanoparticles (PAA-Co_0.85Se NPs) were synthesized through an ambient aqueous precipitating approach for synergistic photothermal-chemo treatment of cancer. The obtained PAA-Co_0.85Se NPs possess ultrasmall size (8.2 ± 2.6 nm), considerable near-infrared (NIR) light absorption, high photothermal transforming efficiency (45.2%) and low cytotoxicity, all of which are beneficial for localized photothermal ablation of cancer cells. Doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX·HCl) was then successfully loaded on PAA-Co_0.85Se NPs with a loading capacity up to 8.3% to form PAA-Co_0.85Se-DOX composites, which exhibited an exciting acidic pH-responsive drug release property due to the protonation of amino groups in DOX and carboxyl groups in PAA molecules. As expected, when HeLa cells were treated with PAA-Co_0.85Se-DOX NPs as well as NIR laser irradiation, a significant synergistic cell-killing effect was observed, greatly improving the treatment efficiency. Thus, this work presents novel insight into the design of ultrasmall stimuli-responsive nanocarrier-based DDSs for synergistic photothermal-chemo treatment of cancer cells.

Keywords: cancer cells; cobalt selenide; pH-responsive; photothermal-chemo.