Latest Research

Screening paclitaxel-loaded capsules for tumor eradication using microfluidic channels

Abstract

“With the aim to locally enhance the efficacy of cancer nanotherapies, here we present metal iron based magnetoplasmonic drug-loaded nanocapsules (MAPSULES), merging powerful external magnetic concentration in the tumor and efficient photothermal actuation to locally boost the drug therapeutic action at ultralow drug concentrations. The MAPSULES are composed of paclitaxel-loaded polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) nanoparticles partially coated by a nanodome shape iron/silica semishell. The iron semishell has been designed to present a ferromagnetic vortex for incorporating a large quantity of ferromagnetic material while maintaining high colloidal stability. The large iron semishell provides very strong magnetic manipulation via magnetophoretic forces, enabling over 10-fold higher trapping efficiency in microfluidic channels than typical superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. Moreover, the iron semishell exhibits highly damped plasmonic behavior, yielding intense broadband absorbance in the near-infrared biological windows and photothermal efficiency similar to the best plasmonic nanoheaters. The in vivo therapeutic assays in a mouse xenograft tumor model show a high amplification of the therapeutic effects by combining magnetic concentration and photothermal actuation in the tumor, leading to a complete eradication of the tumors at ultralow nanoparticle and drug concentration (equivalent to only 1 mg/kg PLGA nanoparticles containing 8 μg/kg of paclitaxel, i.e., 100–500-fold lower than the therapeutic window of the free and PLGA encapsulated drug and 13–3000-fold lower than current nanotherapies combining paclitaxel and light actuation). These results highlight the strength of this externally controlled and amplified therapeutic approach, which could be applied to locally boost a wide variety of drugs for different diseases.

MAPSULES structural properties. (A) Schematic of the drug-loaded ferromagnetic nanocapsules components and their functionalities. (B) SEM image of the self-assembled PLGA nanoparticles capped with Fe (20 nm) and SiO2 (10 nm). (C) TEM images of the ferromagnetic nanocapsules after dispersion in water for 3 h. (D) High-magnification TEM image of the semishell to show the thickness of the Fe and SiO2 layers, and (E) EDX mapping at the energies corresponding to Fe and Si atoms.” Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License from Arnon Fluksman, Aritz Lafuente, Zhi Li, Jordi Sort, Silvia Lope-Piedrafita, Maria José Esplandiu, Josep Nogues, Alejandro G. Roca, Ofra Benny, and Borja Sepulveda ACS Nano Article ASAP.


Figures and the abstract are reproduced from
Arnon Fluksman, Aritz Lafuente, Zhi Li, Jordi Sort, Silvia Lope-Piedrafita, Maria José Esplandiu, Josep Nogues, Alejandro G. Roca, Ofra Benny, and Borja Sepulveda ACS Nano Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c05733 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Read the original article:
Efficient Tumor Eradication at Ultralow Drug Concentration via Externally Controlled and Boosted Metallic Iron Magnetoplasmonic Nanocapsules

Pouriya Bayat

Published by
Pouriya Bayat

Recent Posts

Microfluidic Research on C. elegans for Developmental Toxicity Testing: A Novel Machine Learning Approach

Traditional developmental toxicity (DevTox) studies largely rely on mammalian models to assess chemical impacts on…

February 4, 2025

Advancing Liquid Biopsies with High-Throughput Microfluidics

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) hold the potential for cancer diagnosis and monitoring, offering a non-invasive…

January 20, 2025

Development of a Microfluidic Impedance Flow Cytometer

Leukocyte differentiation and counting are critical for clinical diagnostics but are hindered by the low…

January 6, 2025

Enhanced Screening of Proteolytic Microorganisms Using a Passive Droplet Microfluidic Platform

Screening for microbial proteolytic activity is essential in various biotechnological applications, including bioenergy, food processing,…

December 17, 2024

Chromatin Dynamics and Nuclear Condensate Behavior: Insights From a Microfluidic Assay

Understanding how cellular components, especially chromatin and nuclear condensates, respond to mechanical forces during confined…

November 25, 2024

Advances in High-Accuracy, High-Throughput Droplet Microfluidic Sorting Using Dual Fluorescence and Size-Based Selection

In droplet microfluidics, high-throughput screening is critical for analyzing large cellular or molecular libraries at…

November 6, 2024