For a long time, researchers have been puzzled of the therapy of malignant tumors and the current therapeutic strategies are always accompanied by toxicity or side effects. Making use of the irregular vascularization with abnormal leakiness of the tumor vessels, gadofullerene nanoparticles functionalized with amino acid (specially β-alanine, abbreviated as GF-Ala), circulate in the blood and then accumulate at the tumor site through the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect. Due to the involvement of β-alanine onto the fullerene cage improving the uniformity of size distribution, magnetic properties and the affinity with proteins, GF-Ala nanoparticles assisted by radiofrequency have exhibited a higher antitumor activity than multihydroxylated gadolinium endohedral metallofullerenes (GF-OH) nanoparticlesour recently reported. We speculate the superior properties of GF-Ala nanoparticles result in a stronger interaction with radiofrequency and long blood circulation time, which would influence the nanoparticles to destruction of tumor vasculature. Long-term toxicity evaluation show GF-Ala nanoparticles could be eliminated from the mice after several days and no obvious toxicity was found to the main organs. All these results suggest GF-Ala is valuable to develop into a potential anticancer drug with high-efficacy and low-toxicity

References

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