Polynorepinephrine-Functionalized FeOOH Nanoparticles Loaded With Artemisinin For Chemotherapy And Photothermal Therapy

Cancer is one of the major diseases that damage human life.At present,chemical drug therapy,radiation therapy and surgical interventional treatment are the main methods applied to cancer treatment.However,these treatment methods are often accompanied by serious toxic side effects in clinical treatment.Because of the limitations of traditional anti-cancer therapies,the research of new therapeutic methods and technologies are very important and urgent.According to the heat tolerance characteristics of cancer cells,photothermal therapy arises at the historic moment.And nanoparticles have small size and high permeability retention effect(EPR),so it can accumulate in the tumor site during the blood circulation in the vivo.Compared with the traditional treatment,photothermal therapy has the advantages of good efficacy and little toxic side effects.In recent years,the photothermal therapy has been paid much attentionAs we know,the artificial chemically synthesized anti-cancer drugs often have some unavoidable toxic side effects.With the development of the biopharmaceutical,the Artemisinin(Art)has attracted special attention and become a hotspot of research.Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene natural medicine which is extracted from the stem leaves of artemisia argyi.The peroxide bridge of Artemisinin can break down through the catalytic action of iron and producing free radicals.The Artemisinin is low toxicity and fast-acting.However,because of the poor water solubility of artemisinin and the rapid metabolism from the intravenous injection into the body,the therapeutic effect of Artemisinin is not ideal.To overcome some of the transport barriers in the body,prolong the circulation time of drugs in the body and achieve drug-controlled sustained-release effects,some special responsive nanoparticle drug delivery system can be used to load hydrophobic drugs.It not only improves the utilization rate of hydrophobic drugs,but also reduces the toxic and side effects of hydrophobic drugs and improves the therapeutic effect.In this paper,we present a facial method to create versatile drug delivery nanoplatform(FeOOH@PNE),PNE-functionalized FeOOH,which was based on ferric chloride and norepinephrine.Norepinephrine is a derivative of catecholamine and has good biocompatibility.After polymerization,FeOOH@PNE nanoparticles with good photothermal conversion properties like polydopamine can be applied to photothermal therapy.This paper describes the preparation,synthesis and characterization of FeOOH@PNE nanomaterials.Moreover,we used FeOOH@PNE Nanoparticles to loaded with Artemisinin to study and evaluate the performance and effect of the FeOOH@PNE-Art drug delivery system in vitro and in vivo.PNE-functionalized FeOOH nanocomposite exhibits excellent good biocompatibility,drug loading capacity,photothermal performance and sustained release property.What's more,the in vitro cell experiments indicated that FeOOH@PNE nanoparticle can be successfully endocytosed by cells.The in vivo animal experiment indicated that FeOOH@PNE nanoparticle can be successfully converged on the tumor site by the passive targeting.The vivo and vitro experimental results have shown that the release of iron ions by FeOOH@PNE nanoparticles can promote the anti-cancer effect of artemisinin.FeOOH@PNE-Art nanoparticles drug system showed good combined treatment in antitumor effect.