Gold nanoparticle-based 2'-O-methyl modified DNA probes for breast cancerous theranostics

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that regulated diverse cellular processes including differentiation, proliferation, apoptosis, metabolism and signal transduction pathways. An increasing number of data suggested that miRNA-21 could be identified as diagnostic and therapeutic biomarker for breast cancer. Meanwhile, inhibiting the function of miRNA-21, resulting in cells growth inhibition and apoptotic cells death. To realize miRNA-21detection and inhibition to diagnostic and therapeutic breast cancer cells, we developed gold nanoparticle-based 2'-O-methyl modified DNA probes (AuNP-2'-OMe-DNA probes) for diagnostic and therapeutic breast cancer. Gold nanoparticles were functionalized with chemically modified miRNA-21 inhibitor to suppress the function of miRNA-21 for the therapeutic breast cancer, at the same time, fluorophore-labeled DNA molecules were hybridized with antimiRNA-21 for diagnostic breast cancer. The results showed that the 2'-O-methyl modified DNA can improve stability, increase binding affinity to target strands and enhance the therapeutic effects. The experimental results also demonstrated that antimiR-21 were efficiently introduced into the cells and knocked down miRNA-21 to inhibit its function, leading to growth inhibition and apoptotic cells death. We prospected that chemically modified miRNA-21 inhibitor based on gold nanoparticles would be as a promising diagnostic and therapeutic platform for breast cancer clinically.