Abstract
Hyaluronic acid (HA) has been implemented for chemo and photothermal therapy to target tumour cells overexpressing the CD44+ receptor. HA-targeting hybrid systems allows carbon nanomaterial (CNM) carriers to efficiently deliver anticancer drugs, such as doxorubicin and gemcitabine, to the tumour sites. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, graphene oxide (GO), and graphene quantum dots (GQDs) are grouped for a detailed review of the novel nanocomposites for cancer therapy. Some CNMs proved to be more successful than others in terms of stability and effectiveness at removing relative tumour volume. While the literature has been focused primarily on the CNTs and GO, other CNMs such as carbon nano-onions (CNOs) proved quite promising for targeted drug delivery using HA. Near-infrared laser photoablation is also reviewed as a primary method of cancer therapy—it can be used alone or in conjunction with chemotherapy to achieve promising chemo-photothermal therapy protocols. This review aims to give a background into HA and why it is a successful cancer-targeting component of current CNM-based drug delivery systems.
Highlights
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are large cylindrical molecules consisting of a hexagonal arrangement of sp2-hybridised carbon atoms, which may be formed by rolling a single sheet of graphene, called single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), or by rolling up multiple sheets of graphene, named multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) [64]
While the cumulative release profiles are not efficient in this paper, the expected tumour reduction would be quite high, as a cell viability rate of 40% is exceptionally high for a 5 min treatment. Another successful paper using chemo-photoablation was a study conducted by Hou et al [107] utilizing the hybrid Mitoxantrone loaded Graphene Oxide functionalized with hyaluronic acid in conjunction with a laser (MIT/Hyaluronic acid (HA)-graphene oxide (GO)), where the relative tumour volume was reduced by 85.19% after 6 days
Other applicative uses of the HA-carbon nanomaterial (CNM) systems have been discussed—in particular, using a chemo-photothermal approach can lead to an increased tumour treatment speed
Summary
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a biocompatible, nonimmunogenic, and biodegradable anionic natural polysaccharide [1]. Biodegradability, biocompatibility, low toxicity, and selective targeting to focus sites enable HA to possess great potential for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications [13,17] As this is a relatively new concept, most of the literature surrounding conjugated drug delivery has been published in the last ten years, with different drug delivery systems being developed. Photothermal therapy is a highly effective cancer treatment method that uses a photosensitizer to irradicate tumorous cells through targeted ablation, as shown in Figure 3 [33]. As with any carbon structure, CNMs are highly hydrophobic and have to be made hydrophilic for biological applications While this presents its challenges, the benefits of utilising these biocompatible CNMs for drug delivery systems in vivo outweigh the key fundamental issues related to their hydrophobic nature. The nanocomposite is covalently bound to ferrocene, which selectively targets cancer cells and causes the generation of reactive oxygen species [63] that are cytotoxic to cells
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