Gold nanorod decorated with cancer drug for multimodal imaging and therapy
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2017-12
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Faraday Discussions
Abstract
Cancer, a condition with uncontrolled cell division is the second leading cause of death worldwide. The currently available
techniques for the imaging and treatment of cancer have their own limitations and hence a combination of more than one
modality is expected to increase the efficacy of both diagnosis and treatment. In the present study, we have developed a
multimodal imaging and therapeutic system by incorporating a chemotherapeutic drug, mitoxantrone(MTX) onto PEG
coated gold nanorods (GNR). Strong absorption in the near-infrared and visible region qualifies GNR as an efficient photo
thermal (PTT) agent upon irradiation with either NIR or visible laser. Additionally, enhanced electric field of GNR makes it a
suitable substrate for surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Modification of GNR with amino PEG offers
biocompatability without affecting its optical property. In order to achieve tumor specificity, GNR-PEG was conjugated
with tumor specific marker that can target cancer cells, leaving the normal cells unaffected. The incorporation of
fluorescent chemotherapeutic drug mitoxantrone onto GNR-PEG facilitates the chemo therapy as well as fluorescence
imaging. The therapeutic efficacy of the developed GNR based system is tracked using fluorescence imaging and Raman
imaging. Careful designing of the system also facilitates the controlled release of the drug by photothermal triggering.
Llikewise, the imaging modality could be chosen as either Raman or fluorescence to monitor drug release in accordance
with irradiation. The physico-chemical properties, and drug release profile under different physiological conditions have
been well studied. Finally, the developed system was tested for the therapeutic efficacy using cancer cells, in vitro. The
receptor mediated cell uptake was more effective in the folate over expressed cancer cells than in the normal and low
expressed cells. Accordingly the percentage of cell death was more in folate over expressed cancer cells which further
enhanced due to the effect of dual therapeutic approach. The cell uptake and treatment efficacy was monitored using the
fluorescence microscopy and SERS. In conclusion, the developed GNR-PEG-MTX system is found to be an efficient
multimodal therapeutic agent against cancer which could be tracked using two different techniques.
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Nair RV, Santhakumar H, Jayasree RS. Gold nanorod decorated with cancer drug for multimodal imaging and therapy. Faraday Discussions. 2017