Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
field of protein based cancer theranostic approach, an enhanced quality of life will
be offered for cancer patients. These proteins either alone or in combination with
various other available therapeutic approaches are used for targeted cancer therapy
and imaging. The current portion discussed on various proteins or peptides based
approaches that have great theranostic potentials in the near future.
5.1 Albumins
Albumins are water soluble globular proteins commonly found in blood plasma,
responsible for maintaining the osmotic pressure of blood, transport of fatty acids,
hormones, enzyme etc. During the past decades albumin emerged as versatile nan-
oplatform for the development of theranostic nanoparticles (NPs) for simultaneous
diagnosis and therapy due to their non
toxic, non-immunogenic, biocompatible
and biodegradable nature. Among various commercially available albumins bovine
serum albumin (BSA) and human serum albumin (HSA) are most extensively
exploited proteins.
‐
5.1.1 Bovine Serum Albumin
A novel theranostic BSA-based nanocarrier containing CoFe
2
O
4
NPs has been
developed as a promising nanoplatform to execute hyperthermic treatment in Hela
cells and MRI in liver and brain of normal rats. Such carrier starts heating up in
the presence of high-frequency magnetic field that lead to hyperthermia/ablation
of tissues, currently reported as magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH) (Franchini
et al. 2010). In a similar way, a highly stable and biocompatible protein based
theranostic agents has been developed by using protein fabricated reduced gra-
phene oxide (nano-rGO) for photoacoustic/ultrasonic dual modality imaging and
photothermal therapy. In vivo studies on tumor bearing mice showed rapid and
noteworthy enhancement of photoacoustic signal in the tumor region, showing its
excellence for photoacoustic imaging, while exposure to continuous-wave near-
infrared (NIR) laser lead to cancer cell ablation due to photothermal effect (Sheng
et al. 2013). In addition, Zhao et al. (2014) developed a biocompatible heat-labile
enterotoxin subunit B (LTB)-BSA NPs loaded with anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil
(5FU) for improved tumor targeted therapy. LTB is a non-catalytic protein from a
pentameric subunit of
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
) which specifically bind to ganglio-
side GM1 on the surface of cells. The cellular uptake has been studied by modify-
ing the carrier molecule and labeled it with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) to
form FITC-BSA-LTB NPs.
Hamblin et al. (2000) reported the scavenger receptor—targeted photody-
namic therapy (PDT) that gives a high degree of specificity toward macrophages
and could be used for the treatment of tumors and atherosclerosis. Photosensitizer
(PS) were covalently attached to the ligand that specifically recognized and
