Carbon nanotubes as cancer therapeutic carriers and mediators

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have received increasing attention in biomedical fields because of their unique structures and properties, including high aspect ratios, large surface areas, rich surface chemical functionalities, and size stability on the nanoscale. Particularly, they are attractive as carriers and mediators for cancer therapy. Through appropriate functionalization, CNTs have been used as nanocarriers for anticancer drugs including doxorubicin, camptothecin, carboplatin, cisplatin, paclitaxel, Pt(II), and Pt(IV), and genes including plasmid DNA, small-interfering RNA, oligonucleotides, and RNA/DNA aptamers. CNTs can also deliver proteins and immunotherapy components. Using combinations of light energy, they have also been applied as mediators for photothermal therapy and photodynamic therapy to directly destroy cancer cells without severely damaging normal tissue. If limitations such as a long-term cytotoxicity in the body, lack of size uniformity during the synthetic process, loading deviations for drug–CNT complexes, and release controllability at the target point are overcome, CNTs will become one of the strongest tools that are available for various other biomedical fields as well as for cancer therapy.

Keywords:

• carbon nanotubes
• cancer
• therapy
• carrier
• mediator

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant (No 2014R1A1A2A16054777) and Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) grant (HI13C-1602-010015) funded by the Korea government and Gachon University Gil Medical Center (No FRD2014-02-02).

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.