A Sweet Polydopamine Nanoplatform for Synergistic Combination of Targeted Chemo-Photothermal Therapy

• Published in: Macromolecular rapid communications. 2015-05, Vol.36 (10), p.916-922
• Main Authors: Gao, Yanqin, Wu, Xingjie, Zhou, Linzhu, Su, Yue, Dong, Chang-Ming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - chemistry; Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - pharmacology; Cell Survival - drug effects; chemo-photothermal therapy; Chemotherapy; Combined Modality Therapy; Dopamine; Doxorubicin - chemistry; Doxorubicin - pharmacology; Drug Carriers; Drug Compounding; Drug delivery systems; HeLa Cells; Hep G2 Cells; Humans; Indoles - chemical synthesis; Lactose - chemistry; Light; Low-Level Light Therapy; Melanins - chemistry; nanomedicines; Nanoparticles; Nanostructure; polydopamine; Polymers - chemical synthesis; Sweets; synergistic effect; targeting effect; Therapy; Vesicles
• ISSN: 1022-1336; 1521-3927
• DOI: 10.1002/marc.201500090

Inspired by sweet or sugar‐coated bullets that are used for medications in clinics and the structure and function of biological melanin, a novel kind of sweet polydopamine nanoparticles and their anticancer drug doxorubicin loaded counterparts are prepared, which integrate an active targeting function, photothermal therapy, and chemotherapy into one polymeric nanocarrier. The oxidative polymerization of lactosylated dopamine and/or with dopamine are performed under mild conditions and the resulting sweet nanoparticles are thoroughly characterized. When exposed to an 808 nm continuous‐wave diode laser, the magnitude of temperature elevation not only increases with the concentration of nanoparticles, but can also be tuned by the laser power density. The nanoparticles possess strong near infrared light absorption, high photothermal conversion efficiency, and good photostability. The nanoparticles present tunable binding with RCA120 lectin and a targeting effect to HepG2 cells, confirmed by dynamic light scattering, turbidity analysis, MTT assay, and flow cytometry. Importantly, the sweet nanoparticles give the lowest IC50 value of 11.67 μg mL−1 for chemo‐photothermal therapy compared with 43.19 μg mL−1 for single chemotherapy and 67.38 μg mL−1 for photothermal therapy alone, demonstrating a good synergistic effect for the combination therapy. A novel kind of sweet polydopamine nano­particles and their DOX‐loaded counterparts are prepared in one pot at ambient conditions, which allows to integrate an active targeting effect, photothermal therapy, and chemotherapy into one nano‐particulate drug delivery vesicle. This work not only establishes a versatile strategy for the biomimetic design and preparation of endogenous biomolecule‐based nanoparticles, but opens up a new route for developing advanced drug delivery vesicles with a synergistic chemo‐photothermal effect for targeted cancer therapy.