Despite the clinical benefits that chemotherapeutics has had on the treatment of breast cancer, drug resistance remains one of the main obstacles to curative cancer therapy. Nanomedicines allow therapeutics to be more targeted and effective, resulting in enhanced treatment success, reduced side effects, and the possibility of minimising drug resistance by the co-delivery of therapeutic agents. Porous silicon nanoparticles (pSiNPs) have been established as efficient vectors for drug delivery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInspired by nature, green chemistry uses various biomolecules, such as proteins, as reducing agents to synthesize metallic nanostructures. This methodology provides an alternative route to conventional harsh synthetic processes, which include polluting chemicals. Tuning the resulting nanostructure properties, such as their size and shape, is challenging as the exact mechanism involved in their formation is still not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn advanced breast cancer (BCa) patients, not the primary tumor, but the development of distant metastases, which occur mainly in the organ bone, and their adverse health effects are responsible for high mortality. Targeted delivery of already known drugs which displayed potency, but rather unfavorable pharmacokinetic properties, might be a promising approach to overcome the current limitations of metastatic BCa therapy. Camptothecin (CPT) is a highly cytotoxic chemotherapeutic compound, yet poorly water-soluble and non-specific.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCells in tissues are enveloped by an instructive niche made of the extracellular matrix. These instructive niches contain three general types of information: topographical, biochemical and mechanical. While the combined effects of these three factors are widely studied, the functions of each individual one has not been systematically characterised, because it is impossible to alter a single factor in a tissue microenvironment without simultaneously affecting the other two.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is a pressing need to develop more effective therapeutics to fight cancer. An idyllic chemotherapeutic is expected to overcome drug resistance of tumors and minimize harmful side effects to healthy tissues. Antibody-functionalized porous silicon nanoparticles loaded with a combination of chemotherapy drug and gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) are developed.
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