Smart Nanoparticles for Breast Cancer Treatment Based on the Tumor Microenvironment

Gold nanoparticles combined baker's yeast as a successful approach for breast cancer treatment

BACKGROUND

Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) has been demonstrated in vitro to sensitize several breast cancer cell lines and to be a safe, non-toxic drug with anti-skin cancer action in mice. Furthermore, plasmonic photothermal treatment using gold nanorods has been authorized as a novel method for in vitro and in vivo cancer therapy.

RESULTS

When compared to tumor-free rats, the treatment with S. cerevisiae conjugated to gold nanospheres (GNSs) lowered Bcl-2 levels while increasing FasL, Bax, cytochrome c, and caspases 8, 9, and 3 levels. Histopathological results showed changes reflecting the ability of nanogold conjugated heat-killed yeast to induce apoptosis is greater than heat-killed yeast alone as the nanogold conjugated with heat-killed yeast showed no tumor, no hyperplasia, no granulation tissue formation, no ulceration, and no suppuration. Nanogold conjugated with heat-killed yeast-treated breast cancer group displayed normal levels of ALT and AST, indicating relatively healthy hepatic cells.

CONCLUSION

Our results proved that nanogold conjugated heat-killed yeast can initiate apoptosis and can be used as a safe non-invasive method for breast cancer treatment more effectively than the yeast alone. This, in turn, gives us new insight and a future hope for the first time that breast cancer can be treated by non-invasive, simple, safe, and naturally originated method and achieves a hopeful treatment and a novel method for in vivo cancer therapy.

Injectable Nano Drug Delivery Systems for the Treatment of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most diagnosed type of cancer, with 2.26 million cases and 685,000 deaths recorded in 2020. If left untreated, this deadly disease can metastasize to distant organs, which is the reason behind its incurability and related deaths. Currently, conventional therapies are used to treat breast cancer, but they have numerous shortcomings such as low bioavailability, short circulation time, and off-target toxicity. To address these challenges, nanomedicines are preferred and are being extensively investigated for breast cancer treatment. Nanomedicines are novel drug delivery systems that can improve drug stability, aqueous solubility, blood circulation time, controlled release, and targeted delivery at the tumoral site and enhance therapeutic safety and effectiveness. Nanoparticles (NPs) can be administered through different routes. Although the injectable route is less preferred than the oral route for drug administration, it has its advantages: it helps tailor drugs with targeted moiety, boosts payload, avoids first-pass metabolism, and improves the pharmacokinetic parameters of the active pharmaceutical ingredients. Targeted delivery of nanomedicine, closer to organelles such as the mitochondria and nuclei in breast cancer, reduces the dosage requirements and the toxic effects of chemotherapeutics. This review aims to provide the current status of the recent advances in various injectable nanomedicines for targeted treatment of breast cancer.

Perspectives of metal-organic framework nanosystem to overcome tumor drug resistance

Cancer is one of the most harmful diseases in the world, which causes huge numbers of deaths every year. Many drugs have been developed to treat tumors. However, drug resistance usually develops after a period of time, which greatly weakens the therapeutic effect. Tumor drug resistance is characterized by blocking the action of anticancer drugs, resisting apoptosis and DNA repair, and evading immune recognition. To tackle tumor drug resistance, many engineered drug delivery systems (DDS) have been developed. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are one kind of emerging and promising nanocarriers for DDS with high surface area and abundant active sites that make the functionalization simpler and more efficient. These features enable MOFs to achieve advantages easily towards other materials. In this review, we highlight the main mechanisms of tumor drug resistance and the characteristics of MOFs. The applications and opportunities of MOF-based DDS to overcome tumor drug resistance are also discussed, shedding light on the future development of MOFs to address tumor drug resistance.

Recent advances in photothermal therapy-based multifunctional nanoplatforms for breast cancer

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancers in women worldwide; however, the successful treatment of BC, especially triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), remains a significant clinical challenge. Recently, photothermal therapy (PTT), which involves the generation of heat under irradiation to achieve photothermal ablation of BC with minimal invasiveness and outstanding spatial–temporal selectivity, has been demonstrated as a novel therapy that can overcome the drawbacks of chemotherapy or surgery. Significantly, when combining PTT with chemotherapy and/or photodynamic therapy, an enhanced synergistic therapeutic effect can be achieved in both primary and metastatic BC tumors. Thus, this review discusses the recent developments in nanotechnology-based photothermal therapy for the treatment of BC and its metastasis to provide potential strategies for future BC treatment.