Liquid Nanoparticles for Nanocatalytic Cancer Therapy

Nanotechnology is revolutionizing cancer therapy, and catalyzes the emerging of ion-involved cancer-therapeutic modality, which unfortunately suffers from undesirable nanocarriers for efficient intracellular ion delivery. To radically extricate from this critical issue, the glutathione (GSH)-responsive organosilica network was employed to lock the liquid drops at the nanoscale via a general bottom-up strategy to achieve the systemic delivery of “ion drugs”. In this work, a sulfate radical generation donor (Na 2 S 2 O 8 ), as a paradigm “ion drug”, was entrapped into this liquid nanoparticle for efficiently delivering to the tumor region. After further surface engineering with pH-responsive tannic acid-Fe 2+ framework, these liquid nanoparticles achieved tumor-microenvironmental pH/GSH-dual responsive ion release (Fe 2+ / Na + / S 2 O 8 2− ) after reaching the tumor sites, where the Fe 2+ further triggered S 2 O 8 2− to generate toxic •SO 4 − and •OH, effectively executing cancer cell ferroptosis (Fe 2+ , ROS) and pyroptosis (Na + , ROS). Such a tumor-responsive/specific liquid nanoplatform is highly instructive for further ion-mediated nanomedicine and disease treatment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved