Combination cancer imaging and phototherapy mediated by membrane-wrapped nanoparticles

Abstract

Cancer is a devastating health problem with inadequate treatment options. Many conventional treatments for solid-tumor cancers lack tumor specificity, which results in low efficacy and off-target damage to healthy tissues. Nanoparticle (NP)-mediated photothermal therapy (PTT) is a promising minimally invasive treatment for solid-tumor cancers that has entered clinical trials. Traditionally, NPs used for PTT are coated with passivating agents and/or targeting ligands, but alternative coatings are being explored to enhance tumor specific delivery. In particular, cell-derived membranes have emerged as promising coatings that improve the biointerfacing of photoactive NPs, which reduces their immune recognition, prolongs their systemic circulation and increases their tumor accumulation, allowing for more effective PTT. To maximize treatment success, membrane-wrapped nanoparticles (MWNPs) that enable dual tumor imaging and PTT are being explored. These multifunctional theranostic NPs can be used to enhance tumor detection and/or ensure a sufficient quantity of NPs that have arrived in the tumor prior to laser irradiation. This review summarizes the current state-of-the-art in engineering MWNPs for combination cancer imaging and PTT and discusses considerations for the path toward clinical translation.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Biomimicry
• photothermal therapy
• theranostic
• multimodal imaging
• nanomedicine
• hyperthermia

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant number DMR1752009. Funding was also provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number R01CA211925 and R35GM149292. GK acknowledges support from the graduate traineeship program NRT-HDR: Computing and Data Science Training for Materials Innovation, Discovery, Analytics (MIDAS) funded by NSF grant number 2125703.