Thermo-sensitive Lipid Bilayer Coated Mesoporous Carbon Nanoparticles for Synergistic Thermo-chemotherapy of Tumor.

Thermo-chemotherapy exhibits a synergistic therapeutic efficiency for cancer, and the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemical drugs could be increased to a large extent at elevated temperature. In this work, a novel biocompatible drug delivery system TSMCN was designed by covering a liposome on the surface of the mesoporous carbon nanoparticles (MCN). The TSMCN had good photothermal efficiency and photostability. The DOX loaded TSMCN (DOX/TSMCN) showed a slower release than DOX loaded MCN-COOH (DOX/MCN-COOH) both in simulated tumor environment (pH 5.0 PBS) and physiological environment (pH 7.4 PBS). And the release curves of DOX/TSMCN exposed to NIR laser exhibited the step-like accelerated release property. The results of CLSM illustrated that the cellular uptake of DOX for DOX/TSMCN could be enhanced by the NIR irradiation. The temperature of the tumor site reached up to 51.9oC after exposed to NIR laser at 1.25 W cm-2 power density for 3 min, which is above the phase transition temperature (Tm) of liposome (40.7oC). The biodistribution of DOX in vivo indicated that the NIR irradiation could prolong the retardation time of DOX in tumor site. The results of both MTT and antitumor efficiency elucidated that the DOX/TSMCN under NIR irradiation had a synergistic therapeutic effect for cancer. Thus the TSMCN could be explored as a powerful nanoplatform which shows great prospect in thermo-chemotherapy of tumor therapy.