Combined Photothermotherapy and Chemotherapy of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Guided by Multifunctional Nanomaterials Enhanced Photoacoustic Tomography

Abstract

Sujuan Zeng,1,* Shiqi Liu,1,2,* Yintao Lan,3 Ting Qiu,3 Mengyu Zhou,3 Weijian Gao,3 Wenyan Huang,1 Lihong Ge,1,4 Jian Zhang1,3 1Department of Pedodontics, Affiliated Stomatology Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Basic and Applied Research of Oral Regenerative Medicine, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Stomatology, Taihe Hospital, Institute of Oral Diseases, School of Dentistry, Hubei University of Medicine, Hubei, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Basic Medical Sciences, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan People’s Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Stomatology Hospital of Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jian Zhang; Lihong Ge Email [email protected]; [email protected]: Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, with 40% occurring in the oral cavity. Although the level of early diagnosis and treatment of OSCC has improved significantly, the five-year survival rate of advanced patients remains unsatisfactory. However, the main challenges before us are how to get an early and accurate diagnosis and how to formulate effective treatment. Nanoparticle-based chemo-photothermal therapy has proven to be a promising non-invasive approach to treating oral squamous cell carcinoma treatment.Methods: In this study, we tried to design and synthesize multifunctional hyaluronic acid (HA) modified gold nanorods/mesoporous silica-based nanoparticles loaded with doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) for photoacoustic imaging (PAI) guided cooperative chemo-photothermal therapy.Results: The resultant nanocomposite shows favorable biocompatibility, relatively low cytotoxicity, ideal drug loading capability and strong PAI signals. In addition, they showed an excellent photothermal conversion efficiency of 49.02% for photothermal therapy (PTT). Moreover, in vivo and in vitro experiments have shown that synergistic chemo-photothermal therapy has better therapeutic effects than chemotherapy alone or PTT (P < 0.05). After being injected into the CAL-27 tumor-bearing mice, the DOX-AuNRs@mSiO2-HA nanoparticles could accumulate rapidly at the tumor sites and achieve complete ablation of tumors when combined with near-infrared laser irradiation, without obvious side effects on normal tissues.Conclusion: Our research provides a solid demonstration of the potential of DOX–AuNRs@mSiO2-HA as a multifunctional platform in PAI-guided photothermal chemotherapy for oral squamous cell carcinoma.Keywords: mesoporous silica coated gold nanorods, photoacoustic imaging, chemo-photothermal therapy, oral squamous cell carcinoma

Keywords

• mesoporous silica coated gold nanorods
• photoacoustic imaging
• chemo-photothermal therapy
• oral squamous cell carcinoma