Scientists have made a progress in the field of drug delivery for the natural anticancer drug recently. According to the microenvironment of cancer cells, the pH-responsive multifunctional mesoporous nanoparticles were developed which can simultaneously deliver hydrophobic Artemisinin (ART) into cancer cells and have Fe²⁺ released.

Fe²⁺ can help ART kill cancer cells, leading to high anticancer efficiency.Because the drugs synthesized through artificial methods are difficult to avoid some side effects, natural plant drugs like Artemisinin(ART) have been of special biological interest for many years. ART is an endoperoxide-containing sesquiterpene isolated from an ancient Chinese herbal remedy and is being widely used as an antimalaria drug. For its special structure containing an endoperoxide bridge which tends to react with Fe²⁺ ions to generate radicals for killing cells of parasite, it has been reported that ART also has special antitumor activity.

However, clinical application of ART in humans has not been achieved to date because the poor water solubility. And iron content in tumor cells is generally much lower than that in erythrocytes. These problems may be overcome by developing nanocarriers which can simultaneously deliver hydrophobic ART and Fe²⁺ ions into cancer cells.

To address the aforementioned challenge, researchers synthesized Fe3O4@C/Ag@mSiO2 (FCA@mSiO2) multifunctional nanocarriers which can load ART as high as 484 mg/g. Moreover, FCA@mSiO2 nanoparticles demonstrated pH-responsive Fe²⁺ ions release, the concentration of Fe²⁺ ions can reach 2.765 nmol/L in Hela cells cultured with FCA@mSiO2 nanoparticles. The antitumor efficacy of ART-loaded FCA@mSiO2 nanoparticles measured by MTT assay was significantly enhanced compared with free ART. And the inhibition efficiency is comparable with the traditional artificial anticancer drug transported by multifunctional nanocarriers. This result provides a way for using promising natural drugs in anticancer therapeutics.

This work entitled with “Multifunctional Mesoporous Nanoparticles as PH-Responsive Fe²⁺ Reservoirs and Artemisinin Vehicles for Synergistic Inhibition of Tumor Growth” was published on Biomaterials. The results was obtained by a group of researchers led by Prof. Qianwang Chen and his colleagues. 

 

Relative link to this article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961214004153