GLUT-Targeting Phototherapeutic Nanoparticles for Synergistic Triple Combination Cancer Therapy

The combination of multimodal therapies into one nanocarrier system is promising for its potential to enhance treatment performance by overcoming the efficacy problems encountered in conventional monomodal therapy. In this study, targeted and multimodal therapeutic hybrid nanocarriers are fabricated for breast cancer treatments. In this context, the synthesized gold nanorods (AuNRd), photothermal therapy (PTT) agent, are coated with doxorubicin (DOX) conjugated, targeted, and biocompatible tetrablock glycopeptide (P(DMAEMA-b-HMBAMA-b-FrucMA)-b-P(Lys)/DOX, P-DOX) polymer. Here, fructose-based (Fruc) glycopeptide polymer enhances cellular uptake into breast cancer through GLUT5. A photosensitizer molecule, indocyanine green (ICG), was loaded into the particles to provide photodynamic therapy (PDT) upon NIR light at 808 nm. In the final step of the fabrication, the polymer-coated nanoparticles are integrated with antisense ISIS5132 oligonucleotides to prevent apoptotic resistance of cells against drug molecules. The biocompatibility and therapeutic efficacy of the nanoparticles are evaluated on both human normal skin fibroblast cell (CCD-1079Sk) and human breast cancer cell (MCF7) lines. These multimodal therapeutic AuNRd@P-DOX/ICG/ISIS5132 nanoparticles demonstrate an efficient triple synergistic effect of chemo-/PTT/PDT, which is desired for breast cancer treatment. We believe that this promising multimodal therapeutic nanoparticle system can promote the further clinical application in the treatment of breast cancer and can also be adapted to other types of cancer.