科学家开发出来一种两阶段纳米颗粒疗法，它可能有助于克服目前许多纳米疗法面临的免疫系统的挑战。
Michael Sailor及其同事开发了一对合作纳米颗粒，它们可能躲避人体的抗体防御系统并让药物在靶标（例如癌细胞）散布。这种纳米颗粒的第一阶段是一种金纳米棒“激活剂”，它寻找并覆盖整个肿瘤。这种激活剂分子能够像天线一样活动，吸收外部的红外激光照射。这种照射让肿瘤升温，从而引发这些细胞产生一种称为P32的蛋白质，后者又会与第二种纳米颗粒上面的称为脂质体的受体结合。这第二种纳米颗粒可以掺入抗癌药物，然后选择性地与这种最初的疗法相结合。在对这种合作纳米颗粒疗法的测试中，这组作者向脂质体掺入了一种称为阿霉素的抗癌药并把这种药物注射到有癌症肿瘤的实验小鼠体内。这组科学家发现这些小鼠的肿瘤尺寸比用单一或非靶向纳米颗粒治疗的小鼠的肿瘤尺寸显著减小。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS December 28, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0909565107
Cooperative nanomaterial system to sensitize, target, and treat tumors
Ji-Ho Parka,b, Geoffrey von Maltzahnc, Mary Jue Xuc, Valentina Fogald, Venkata Ramana Kotamrajue, Erkki Ruoslahtid,e, Sangeeta N. Bhatiac,f,g and Michael J. Sailora,b,h,1
aMaterials Science and Engineering Program,
bDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and
hDepartment of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, Ca 92093, and
cHarvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and
fElectrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Ma 02139, and
gDivision of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Ma 02115, and
dCancer Research Center, Burnham Institute for Medical Research, 10901 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, Ca 92037, and
eVascular Mapping Center, Burnham Institute for Medical Research at UCSB, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Ca 93106
A significant barrier to the clinical translation of systemically administered therapeutic nanoparticles is their tendency to be removed from circulation by the mononuclear phagocyte system. The addition of a targeting ligand that selectively interacts with cancer cells can improve the therapeutic efficacy of nanomaterials, although these systems have met with only limited success. Here, we present a cooperative nanosystem consisting of two discrete nanomaterials. The first component is gold nanorod (NR) “activators” that populate the porous tumor vessels and act as photothermal antennas to specify tumor heating via remote near-infrared laser irradiation. We find that local tumor heating accelerates the recruitment of the second component: a targeted nanoparticle consisting of either magnetic nanoworms (NW) or doxorubicin-loaded liposomes (LP). The targeting species employed in this work is a cyclic nine-amino acid peptide LyP-1 (Cys-Gly-Asn-Lys-Arg-Thr-Arg-Gly-Cys) that binds to the stress-related protein, p32, which we find to be upregulated on the surface of tumor-associated cells upon thermal treatment. Mice containing xenografted MDA-MB-435 tumors that are treated with the combined NR/LyP-1LP therapeutic system display significant reductions in tumor volume compared with individual nanoparticles or untargeted cooperative system.
