Toxic reactive oxygen species enhanced chemodynamic therapy by copper metal-nanocellulose based nanocatalysts

When compared with traditional petroleum-based materials, bio-based materials show greater application potential in the field of biomedicine owing to the good biocompatibility, in specifical, the application of natural macromolecular polymers in chemotherapeutics has become a hot topic in anticancer treatment. In this study, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were selected as carriers, and Au nanoparticles (NPs) were directly conjugated on their surface, with the highly reactive Cu²⁺ ions serving as an ion-ligand bridge, to construct a multifunctional nanocatalyst. These findings suggest that the nanosystem delivers a large amount of highly reactive Cu²⁺ ions (3.75 wt%) and DOX (7.71 wt%) by the surface loading of cellulose nanocrystals, which greatly improves ROS yield and promotes the application of the Fenton reaction system in cancer therapy.