Chemotherapy and photothermal therapy via nanomaterials are two principle approaches for cancer treatment. There has been an increasing interest in the combination of these two approaches to achieve a synergetic therapeutic effect. One candidate material for this strategy is polydopamine (PDA), which has excellent biocompatibility, abundant functional groups for modification to allow binding of pharmaceutical molecules or targeting moieties, and a high photothermal conversion efficiency for photothermal therapy. Recently, it has been reported that rod-shape nanoparticles have longer circulatory lives and are more amenable to cellular internalization, suggesting that tubular shaped PDA particles would be particularly attractive in cancer therapy. Robust tube-like PDA nanotubes were synthesized via self-polymerization in Tris-HCl buffer. Halloysite, a natural, inexpensive nanotube, was used as sacrificial template material. The morphology and structure of synthesized nanotubes were determined via transmission electron microscope (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). On XRD pattern, the absence of halloysite peaks and the presence of broad PDA peaks after etching, indicate the removal of halloysite template and formulation of PDA shell. Drug loading and photo stimulated release kinetics were investigated using doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) as a model compound. Photothermal conversion efficiency was evaluated by irradiation at 808 nm, an obvious temperature elevation was observed after 6 minutes of irradiation. Photo-stimulated release was also investigated in various pH conditions at this wavelength. With irradiation of near-infrared laser, the release of absorbed DOX was effectively accelerated.

Photoactivated release from polydopamine nanotubes

255th National Meeting (2018)

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