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Published on: December 15, 2010
Glutathione-depleting nanoplatelets for enhanced sonodynamic cancer therapy
Chunyu Huang1, Shuaijie Ding2, Wei Jiang3
1Department of Molecular Pathology, Application Center for Precision Medicine, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Academy of Medical Sciences, Henan 450052, China and Department of Electronic Science and Technology, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Abstract:
In combating cancer, ultrasound (US)-triggered sonodynamic therapy (SDT) manifests a wide range of promising applications as a noninvasive treatment modality, thus showing potential to overcome the shortcomings and disadvantages of conventional photodynamic therapy (PDT). Reactive oxygen species (ROS)-based therapy is practically destroyed by the high concentration of glutathione (GSH) inside tumors, and depleting GSH to improve the outcome of SDT is indeed a great challenge. Herein, we designed GSH-depleting nanoplatelets for enhanced sonodynamic cancer therapy. A platelet membrane coated nanosystem (PSCI) has been designed and tested comprising mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) which have been loaded with cinnamaldehyde (CA) as an oxidative stress amplifier. The inner layer comprises the sonosensitizer IR780 and the oxidative stress amplifier CA, whereas the platelet membranes (PM) were designed and utilized as an outer layer that can target tumors, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of SDT by attenuating the capability of tumor cells for scavenging ROS with GSH. SDT and cinnamaldehyde amplify oxidative stress by acting synergistically, leading to the preferential destruction of cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. It is hoped that next-generation tumor SDT treatments will find their way with the help of this strategy.

