Polynorepinephrine Nanoparticles For Combined Chemo-Photothermal Therapy Against Cancer Cells

Cancer poses a great threat to human,s health.Traditional treatments against cancer include chemotherapy,surgical treatment,radiotherapy and so on,and chemotherapy is most widely used.However,due to the side effects of chemotherapy and drug resistance,the effects of chemotherapy is limited,at the same time,patients endure great pain during treatment.Photothermal therapy is a fresh method for cancer therapy,which has lots of advantages over traditional cancer treatments,such as short recovery times,minimal invasiveness,and few complication rates.Combination of photothermal therapy and chemotherapy in a whole system is an effective way in destroying cancer cells than monotherapy as it can deliver both heat and drug simultaneously to the tumor.Norepinephrine(NE),a derivative of dopamine,can realize self-polymerization to form polynorepinephrine(PNE)under a mild condition.PNE owns good adhesion,good photothermal property and a low cytotoxity.However,there is little research about PNE in drug delivery and photothermal therapy in cancer.Herein,we developed a facile method to create versatile drug delivery nanoplatform(PNE-PEG),polyethylene glycol(PEG)functionalized PNE,which was based on norepinephrine and PEG,and it can be used in the field of combined chemotherapy and photothermal therapy.Results showed that the PNE-PEG nanoparticles have good stability and uniformity in water and physiological solution.It also has a strong absorption in the near infrared region,which contributes to its good photothermal effect.Irradiated at 808 nm laser for 8 min,temperature of the sample(200 ?g/mL)can reach 67 ?,which is much greater than the tolerance temperature of cancer cell(50 ?).Also,the drug loading nanoparticle drug delivery system(PNE-PEG/DOX)has pH and near infrared light double stimulus response effects.Furthermore,the in vitro cell experiments indicated that PNE-PEG nanoparticles can be successfully endocytosed by cells and showed no obvious cytotoxicity.With these features mentioned above,the PNE-PEG nanocomposite has been endowed excellent in vitro synergistic antitumor effect.It is a great encouragement for further exploration of multifunctional nanoplatform for cancer therapy.