Novel nano-capsule for targeted drug delivery and real-time therapeutic monitoring in osteosarcoma treatment

Chemotherapy has become a common treatment for osteosarcoma, a malignant tumour, due to its relatively low pain. However, traditional monitoring of the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs is often limited by the targeting ability of the drug and the probe, resulting in a significant reduction in the effectiveness of the probe in locating the drug at the point of action. Therefore, the development of nano-capsules for simultaneous delivery of the drug and the monitoring probe to the tumour site for simultaneous monitoring of the therapeutic effect of chemotherapeutic drugs is essential. In response to this demand, a novel nano-capsule, NG@Au-pep@DOX, was developed for personalized and precise cancer treatment. This system facilitates the targeted delivery of an apoptotic probe (Au-pep) and an anti-cancer drug to cancer cells. The nanogel delivery system ensures efficient, low side effect drug delivery combined with apoptosis probes to monitor efficacy in real time. The designed nano-capsule consists of a caspase-3 probe with a detection limit of 0.101 ng/μL. It can encapsulate doxorubicin with an encapsulation rate of 93.94 % and a loading rate of 5.68 %. We used fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry and other methods and through the construction of 3D cell microspheres, live and dead cell staining, cell scratching, Transwell experiments, etc. to investigate the prospects of the constructed nanocapsules in biological cells, and applied them to mice, and all of them achieved the expected results. This integrated approach can be used to address the long waiting times inherent in chemotherapy efficacy monitoring and to improve the accuracy of drug as well as probe targeting. It represents a promising strategy for the accurate and personalized treatment of osteosarcoma.