Novel strategies for cancer treatment: drug delivery combining graphene quantum dots and core-filled lipid vesicles

Abstract

[Excerpt] Cancer remains a global health problem and according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the incidence of all cancer cases will raise from 12.7 million new cases in 2008 to 21.2 million by 20301 . Doxorubicin (DOX) is considered one of the main “first-line” anticancer drugs. However, besides being a wide-spectrum antitumor drug its clinical application is limited as it is often associated with serious and generalized toxicity, development of drug resistence and low therapeutic efficiency.2 Accordingly,our research focuses in obtaining a smart nanosystem to delivery DOX to cancer cells more efficiently and with less toxicity. In view to this, we developed an all-for-one strategy, consisting on the development of two different nanocarriers loaded with doxurrubicin: DODAB:MO (1:2) formulations and graphene quantum dots (GQD) that we aim to combine in a hybrid smart nanosystem for cancer therapy.[...]