Polymeric nanostructures to leverage magnetic hyperthermia in cancer therapy Binh Mai 1,2 , John S. Conteh 2 and Teresa Pellegrino 2 1 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, University of Galway, Ireland, 2 Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy. Hyperthermic effect generated from functional nanostructures upon the external excitation of alternating magnetic field, also known as magnetic hyperthermia (MHT), represents a promising approach to treat solid tumors. 1,2 However, standalone MHT do not offer a complete cure of tumor although the suppression of tumor growth is evident in clinical treatment. As such, the development of nanostructure enabling the combination between MHT and other modality of treatment such as chemotherapy, an established standard of care therapy in cancer treatment, holds great promise to leverage and harness each single treatment. 1,2 Indeed, the development of magnetic nanostructures that can offer the combined multiple therapies based on magnetic hyperthermia has emerged as a very active and fast-growing field. Our research in the past few years has been focused on the development of nanostructures made of thermo-responsive polymers and iron oxide nanocubes, a benchmark heating mediator, aiming to harness the performance of MHT with chemotherapy. Using living radical polymerization as a workhorse, we have engineered the surface of IONCs with different thermo-responsive polymers with desirable mechanism of response to the heat generated from IONCs surface during MHT. 3,4,5 We revealed that Photo-induced Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) offered an efficient and rapid synthetic pathway to achieve different hybrid nanomaterials made of thermo-responsive polymers and IONCs. Interestingly, we showed that the release of therapeutic agents from IONCs can be obtained exploiting either macroscopic heating or local temperature rise at the surface of IONCs during MHT via a precise control over grafted polymer structures. 4, 5 This, in turn, will deliver the next generation of magnetic nanomaterials to synergize MHT with chemotherapy, offering more potent and low side-effect cancer therapies. References 1. Liu, Xiaoli, et al. "Comprehensive understanding of magnetic hyperthermia for improving antitumor therapeutic efficacy." Theranostics 10.8 (2020): 3793. 2. Gavilán, Helena, et al. "Magnetic nanoparticles and clusters for magnetic hyperthermia: Optimizing their heat performance and developing combinatorial therapies to tackle cancer." Chemical Society Reviews 50.20 (2021): 11614-11667. 3. Mai, Binh T., et al. "Clickable Polymer Ligand-Functionalized Iron Oxide Nanocubes: A Promising Nanoplatform for ‘Local Hot Spots’ Magnetically Triggered Drug Release." ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 14.43 (2022): 48476-48488. 4. Mai, Binh T., et al. "Thermoresponsive iron oxide nanocubes for an effective clinical translation of magnetic hyperthermia and heat-mediated chemotherapy." ACS applied materials & interfaces 11.6 (2019): 5727-5739. 5. Mai, Binh T., et al. "Photo-induced copper mediated copolymerization of activated-ester methacrylate polymers and their use as reactive precursors to prepare multi-dentate ligands for the water transfer of inorganic nanoparticles." Polymer Chemistry 11.17 (2020): 2969-2985.
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© The Author(s), 2021
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