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Mater Sci Nanotechnol 2017 | Volume 1 Issue 2
allied
academies
Nanomaterials and Nanochemistry
November 29-30, 2017 | Atlanta, USA
International Conference on
D
espite the success erlotinib achieved in fighting lung
cancers, the problems of grading and monitoring the
tumor as well as predicting the treatment response may
result in failure of the therapy and resistance of the tumor,
which requires the use of a suitable diagnostic tool that
can monitor the treatment and predicting the treatment
response. As an attempt to address such problems, we
designed a novel theranostic nanoparticle formulation
(NPs) of superparamagnetic iron oxide core, coated with a
thin dextran layer (as determined by transmission electron
microscope (TEM) imaging and dynamic light scattering)
and linked to erlotinib. Such NPs are smart, targeting cancer
cells that overexpress the EGFR, releasing the active drug
intracellularly rather than in the blood stream, accumulating
inside the cancer cells producing high contrast in themagnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) and being non-toxic to the EGFR-
negative cells. Cellular uptake of the NPs was higher than the
product used commonly in clinical practice as MRI contrast
agent, this was evident from the MRI, TEM and Prussian
blue imaging results. Furthermore, we tested the molecular
mechanisms that may account for the potent activity of our
NPs and found that the NPs inhibited the phosphorylation of
the overexpressed EGFR as well as the oncogenic signaling
pathways downstream of the EGFR such as the ERK and
NF-κB pathways which was confirmed by Western blotting
and confocal immunocytochemical imaging. Moreover, the
T2-weighted MRI images of the BALB/c nude mice showed
significant decrease in the normalized signal within the
tumor post-treatment with the NPs compared to the non-
targeted control iron oxide nanoparticles.
e:
ahmedatf@yahoo.comSmart targeted erlotinib-SPION nanoparticles for MRI applications
Ahmed Atef Ahmed Ali
Institute of Molecular Biology Academia Sinica, Taiwan