EGF-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes for targeting delivery of etoposide

作者：Cheng Chen, Xiaoxia Xie, Qian Zhou, Fengyi Zhang, Qiao-Ling Wang, Yaqing Liu, Yina Zou, Qing Tao, Xuemei Ji, Shuqin Yu · 发表于：Nanotechnology · 年份：2012 · DOI：10.1088/0957-4484/23/4/045104 · 被引用次数：56 · 研究领域：Peptidase Inhibition and Analysis、Graphene and Nanomaterials Applications、Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques

To enhance the therapeutic potential of etoposide (ETO), we devised a targeted drug delivery system (TDDS) of epidermal growth factor-chitosan-carboxyl single-walled carbon nanotubes-ETO (EGF/CHI/SWNT-COOHs/ETO) using modified SWNTs (m-SWNTs) as the carrier, EGF-functionalized SWNTs (f-SWNTs) as the targeted moiety and ETO as the drug. After SWNT-COOHs were conjugated with CHI (CHI/SWNT-COOHs/ETO), they displayed high solubility and stable dispersion in aqueous solution. The drug loading capacity was approximately 25-27%. The m-SWNTs and f-SWNTs had only slight cytotoxicity. ETO was released from EGF/CHI/SWNT-COOHs/ETO at low pH and taken up by tumour cells via adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-dependent endocytosis. The cell death induced by EGF/CHI/SWNT-COOHs/ETO was as much as 2.7 times that due to ETO alone. In summary, these results demonstrated that our TDDS had a greater anticancer effect than free ETO in vitro.