Recently, Advanced Materials published the latest research results of Professor Gao Haidong of Qilu Hospital of Shandong University (Qingdao) and Professor Li Chunxia of Qingdao Institute of Frontier Interdisciplinary Research of Shandong University, reporting their new progress in breast cancer treatment research.
New progress has been made in the treatment of breast cancer. Courtesy of Shandong University
With the wide application of new targeted drugs and immunotherapy, the prognosis and survival of patients with a variety of malignant tumors, including breast cancer, have been significantly improved, but dormant tumor cells, as a special type of malignant cells, can resist almost all existing drug treatments, and eventually lead to tumor recurrence.
Based on CQG NPs, a novel anti-breast cancer material with tumor cell self-destruction and multi-enzyme activity designed by Li Chunxia’s team, Gao Haidong’s team used the independently constructed BALB/c human tumor xenograft model and a variety of CDX models to confirm that CQG NPs have a synergistic effect of simultaneously inducing pyroptosis and cupoptosis in breast cancer cells through a large number of in vitro and in vivo experiments and clinical tissue samples. Through the monitoring of a variety of physiological indicators, it was confirmed that CQG NPs were well tolerated in vivo.
In terms of mechanism, this study elucidated the specific antioxidant defense mechanism of tumor cells by inhibiting the nuclear factor-erythrocyte 2-related factor-quinone oxidoreductase signaling pathway. In addition, combined with their excellent multi-enzyme activity, CQG NPs can activate NOD-like receptor protein-mediated pyroptosis.
At the same time, the self-destructive disintegration of copper ions released by CQG NPs can induce copper apoptosis in tumor cells, and the endogenous copper chelator is depleted through the reaction between glutathione quinone ligands, further enhancing the sensitivity of cancer cells to cupropopsis.
More importantly, CQG NPs-induced pyroptosis and cupoptosis can jointly promote the remodeling of the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, significantly enhance the infiltration of immune cells into tumor tissues, and thus activate robust systemic immunity.
Overall, this study provides a new strategy for better resisting tumor cell dormancy, preventing tumor recurrence, and improving the clinical prognosis of tumors. (Source: China Science News, Liao Yang, Che Huiqing)
Related Paper Information:https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202308241
