Conquering multidrug resistant lung cancer by upconversion nanoparticles‐mediated photodynamic therapy and gene silencing

Abstract

AbstractMultidrug resistance (MDR) problem is a challenging task in cancer treatments. Among various types of cancers, lung cancer is considered incurable, as it is diagnosed very often at the advanced metastatic stage, where surgical operations and radiation treatments become highly ineffective. In addition, lung cancers are multidrug resistant either intrinsically or upon continuous administration and stimulation of chemotherapeutic drugs. To conquer the difficult MDR problem, in this study, we developed a simple and effective therapeutic strategy to achieve complete destruction of multidrug resistant lung cancer by an unprecedented upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs)‐mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) combined with effective (~70%) superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene silencing using ultra‐low doses (320 mW/cm2) of NIR light (980 nm) excitation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful literature example in achieving complete destruction of multidrug resistant cancers. Overall, the current work points out a new direction to the clinicians for the therapeutic design and effective treatments of multidrug resistant cancers.