Jinyi
Chen†
ab,
Zhixin
Zhang†
b,
Jiaxin
Ma†
b,
Alireza
Nezamzadeh-Ejhieh
c,
Chengyu
Lu
b,
Ying
Pan
*ab,
Jianqiang
Liu
*abd and
Zhi
Bai
*a
aThe First Dongguan Affiliated Hospital, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, 523808, China. E-mail: pangying@gdmu.edu.cn; weidayou100@163.com
bGuangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Research and Development of Natural Drugs, and School of Pharmacy, Guangdong Medical University, Guangdong Medical University Key Laboratory of Research and Development of New Medical Materials, Dongguan, 523808, China. E-mail: jianqiangliu2010@126.com
cChemistry Department, Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahreza, Isfahan, Iran
dAffiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China
First published on 24th March 2023
Cancer has become the second leading reason for death in the world. Still, cancer therapy development is exceptionally challenging because the tumor microenvironment is very complex, and individual tumors are very different. In recent years, researchers have found that platinum-based drugs in the form of metal complexes can effectively solve tumor resistance. In this regard, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) as suitable carriers with high porosity are also exceptional in the biomedical field. Therefore, this article reviews the application of platinum as an anticancer drug and the composite anticancer properties of platinum and MOF materials and prospects for its future development, which provides a new direction for further research in the biomedical field.
Like cisplatin, carboplatin kills cancer cells by causing damage to DNA, has a non-specific cell cycle, is also drug resistant, and is a hindrance to cancer treatment. Currently, carboplatin is usually used synergistically with other drugs to enhance its therapeutic effect and avoid its drawbacks, such as: (i) in combination with myelosuppressive agents, which increases the risk of myelosuppression; and (ii) in combination with paclitaxel, which prevents the delayed excretion of paclitaxel and increases host toxicity. Although there is no cross-resistance between carboplatin and non-platinum drugs, there is cross-resistance between carboplatin and cisplatin and there is still room for improvement.7 Oxaliplatin, a third-generation platinum drug, was the first platinum drug to be resistant to tumor cells, and it prevents the binding of repair proteins to DNA by introducing the hydrophobic ligand cyclohexanediamine. The beauty of oxaliplatin is the use of an oxalate moiety as the leaving group, which releases oxalate that chelates free calcium ions, leading to severe neurotoxicity of the drug.8 Oxaliplatin is the first platinum-based drug with significant efficacy in colon cancer. It has no cross-resistance with cisplatin and carboplatin and has excellent therapeutic effects, although its drug interactions are not yet known. It is often used clinically in combination with 5-fluorouracil, capecitabine and calcium formyl tetrahydrofolate in the treatment of colon cancer, in addition to changing the ligand structure and preparing drug delivery systems for cancer treatment. Lobaplatin is a third-generation platinum drug that is less toxic than oxaliplatin and readily emulsifies with other drugs, forming “oil-in-drug” particles that can be deposited in the lesion. In addition, lobaplatin is commonly used for transcatheter arterial chemoembolization because its pH is close to the normal physiological pH of the human body.9–12
The development of these three generations of platinum drugs has shown that platinum drugs are widely used as essential drugs for the treatment of common malignancies. Most conventional platinum nanoparticles use their own antioxidant effect for anti-tumor therapy, or even more, they use external energy to generate active oxygen-like species that can inhibit the growth of tumors. However, it is difficult to maximize the effects of platinum drugs in the fight against cancer with platinum nanoparticles alone and, therefore, covalently combining them with other biomolecules to endow them with greater properties is an effective way to enhance their effects. Platinum(IV) prodrugs can be reduced to platinum(II) analogs with cytotoxic activity in both cancer and normal cells, but they still suffer from long hydrolysis times and poor stability to bioreductants, and their toxicity and resistance greatly hinder their role in anticancer therapy. The choice of photoactivated platinum(IV) precursors can solve the problem of passive activation of platinum(IV) precursors, but their stability in the dark is low and they also produce DNA damaging singlet oxygen under hypoxic conditions in cancer cells. Therefore, azide-based complexes were created to overcome the problem of chemotherapeutic drug delivery by combining different polymers, biological target molecules, permeation enhancers or nanoparticles. Meanwhile, the results of ligand-targeted delivery or protease-activation studies of platinum anticancer precursors are exciting, and the use of platinum(IV) complexes for targeted delivery opens up unlimited possibilities for anticancer therapy.13–15 The use of nanoparticle-encapsulated platinum drugs can improve the bioavailability and reduce the toxicity of platinum drugs. Commonly used nanoparticles include liposome, albumin and microsphere formulations. Liposome nanoparticles, used in specific biomolecular interactions to actively target and deliver higher doses of platinum at the site of swollen cancer and reduce non-targeted toxicity, will provide effective drug release with future precision design, offering a bright future for anti-cancer therapy.16 Nevertheless, they still suffer from a low encapsulation rate, poor drug loading capacity, low in vivo clearance and unstable safety.
Compared to transition metal materials that are used in catalyzed reactions,17,18 MOF materials are a class of three-dimensional structured porous materials with high porosity, adjustable pore size and large specific surface area using metal ions as linkages and organic ligands,19–22 making them suitable drug carriers to solve the problem of low drug loading capacity of nano-formulations.23–32 Meanwhile, researchers can create different MOF materials with special properties by changing metal ions or organic ligands.33–37 For example, the backbones of some MOF materials readily collapse when encountering acids so that they can release drugs through backbone collapse at the sites of inflammation or tumors in vivo. There are three main types of MOF materials available: in situ encapsulation, two-step encapsulation, and active molecules as ligands.38–40 MOF materials can adsorb and release large amounts of therapeutic drugs (ibuprofen, procainamide, nitric oxide, etc.), and making MOFs into nanometallic frameworks (NMOFs) as carriers has better results. NMOFs, with infinitely adjustable platforms in their middle, have imaging and therapeutic functions after loading other drugs, and can be considered for use in multifunctional-in-one targeted drug systems.41 Each step of developing MOF carriers, from the beginning with small-molecule drug loading, to the later loading of large-molecule drugs (e.g. proteins), and more recent polymeric nanoparticle encapsulation or membrane coating, has shown great advances in drug delivery by MOFs, and the targeting of catalyst-dependent nanomedicines has also been investigated for its encouraging role in anti-cancer therapy.42 However, this approach is only applicable to drugs with good thermal stability and, therefore, more post-synthetic modifications are currently used to load drugs. As a rare metal, platinum can be used in metal complexes with organic molecules to form antitumor drugs or as a dopant with other metals to prepare MOF materials and encapsulate drugs for clinical therapeutics.43–49Fig. 1a illustrates the history of research into platinum-containing metal oxides in cancer therapy and other treatments. Fig. 1b displays pie charts showing the approximate proportion of current research on platinum-containing prodrugs and platinum-containing metal oxides in the biomedical field, with a detailed breakdown of the applications of platinum-containing metal oxides.
Fig. 1 (a) Axis of the development of platinum-containing MOFs in therapy. (b) Proportion of the different forms of platinum in clinical applications. Reproduced with permission from ref. 50–58. |
As a new metal–organic backbone, MOF materials can play different roles by forming complexes between metal ions and organic ligands. At the same time, they can be used as good drug carriers to carry drugs for delivery because of their large specific surface areas and large pores.
Pt NPs can be used in combination with MOFs for antimicrobial therapy. As shown in Fig. 2, Yu et al. doped platinum atoms into a porphyrin metal–organic skeleton to form PCN-222-Pt for antibacterial and anti-inflammatory use, providing a convenient and non-invasive new method for the treatment of periodontitis without antibiotics.57 In the past, dentists used mechanical debridement and antibiotic administration to treat patients with periodontitis. Still, such therapies would destroy the oral environment and be prone to drug resistance. Therefore, it is necessary to study the clinical treatment without antibiotics.59,60 In the early stage of non-invasive and antibiotic-free therapy, scholars thought of using a metal or its oxides as an alternative to antibiotics to kill bacteria through ion release. Although such methods have a significant effect, they have not been put into clinical treatment due to the long treatment time.61–63 After scholars continued to explore in recent years, more and more nanomaterials and precious metals were found to have good enzyme-like activity,64–70 with MOF materials having more abundant catalytic sites due to their highly porous structure.70 Based on this reason, in the PCN-222-Pt composite material, researchers improved the oxidase activity of PCN-222 by doping with a noble metal platinum atom with its enzyme-like activity providing the MOF material with the same enzyme-like activity. At the same time, the platinum atom can spontaneously generate reactive oxygen species, thereby destroying the bacterial biofilm so that the material can achieve 98.69% anti-Staphylococcus aureus and 99.91% anti-Escherichia coli resistance.
Fig. 2 Preparation and application of the PCN-222-Pt antibacterial ointment. Reproduced with permission from ref. 57. |
In antibacterial therapy, there are usually two ways to kill bacteria. One is to destroy bacterial biofilms to kill bacteria, and the other is to achieve sterilization through photocatalysis. Luo et al. co-doped graphene oxide (GO) and Pt NPs with NH2-MIL-125 to form NH2-MIL-125-GO-Pt for photocatalytic sterilization. In previous photocatalytic experiments using MOF materials, their poor photocatalytic efficiencies due to the shortcomings of pure MOFs, have been greatly improved, such as their wide band gap, their fast recombination rate of photogenerated carriers and weak visible light absorption.71 In the doping of the material, there is a Schottky junction between platinum and the MOF, so there is a large amount of charge at the interface. The excellent conductivity of GO causes the effective separation and transfer of the photogenerated electron–hole (e/h) pairs, resulting in improved photocatalytic efficiency and the ability to kill bacteria.58
We can see from the pie chart in Fig. 1b that the combination of platinum and the MOF is most commonly used in cancer treatment, and that current cancer treatment is no longer limited to traditional treatment methods such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. New types of sonodynamic therapy (SDT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) have been well developed and have attracted the attention of many researchers. Although these two kinetic treatments are non-invasive and efficient tumor treatment methods, they are both affected by the hypoxic environment of the tumor, thereby reducing their treatment efficiency.72,73 To solve the hypoxia problem in such therapies, Gao et al. synthesized Sm-TCPP-Pt/TPP composites by doping platinum nanoparticles with catalase-like activity with the synthesized porphyrin skeleton. This material has a unique two-dimensional structure, which can promote the diffusion of reactive oxygen species, thus providing an oxygen-rich therapeutic environment during PDT and overcoming the defects in traditional PDT.51 As shown in Fig. 3, Ren et al. also used platinum nanozymes and chromium-containing porphyrin skeletons to prepare PCN-224/Pt composites and loaded them with doxorubicin for treatment. Such composites can convert endogenous hydrogen peroxide into oxygen, thereby alleviating the hypoxic environment of tumor tissue. At the same time, the oxygen produced in the process can down-regulate the expression of hypoxia-inducible factors in the body, thereby enhancing the SDT sensitivity and improving the therapeutic effect.56
Fig. 3 (a) The procedure of DOX@PCN-224/Pt NP synthesis. (b) Schematic of the enhanced catalytic SDT-chemo combination cancer therapy driven by Pt nanozyme-decorated PCN-224 NPs. Reproduced with permission from ref. 56. |
The above two studies show that in PDT and SDT treatments, scholars currently tend to combine platinum as a catalase-like nanozyme with different MOF materials50,95,96 to improve the hypoxic environment of tumor tissue. In selecting MOF materials, researchers tend to use porphyrin-based MOF materials with rich metal-active sites and good stability to bind to platinum to the maximum extent, and release more oxygen and better enhance the therapeutic effects of PDT and SDT.
Due to the excellent reductive ability of PDA and its coordination sites toward metal ions, it has been used as a reductant to reduce Pt4+ ions to Pt nanoparticles. As shown in Fig. 4, Wang et al. proposed a new composite material, PDA-Pt@PCN-FA, by encapsulating polydopamine (PDA) and platinum nanoparticles with the zirconium-containing porphyrin MOF material PCN to form a new composite material PDA-Pt@PCN-FA. As shown in Fig. 4, the SEM, DLS and TEM images of PDA-Pt@PCN-FA proved that the synthesis of PDA-Pt@PCN-FA was successful. In this composite material, platinum nanoparticles are still used as catalase-like nanozymes to catalyze endogenous hydrogen peroxide into oxygen. However, unlike the doping form mentioned above, polydopamine is used as the core in this material to stabilize the in situ growth of platinum nanoparticles. The outer layer of this structure is composed of zirconium porphyrins. This composite structure enables each layer to perform its function without mutual interference.
Fig. 4 (a) Schematic of the core–shell manufacture for enhanced tumor therapy. (b) SEM and DLS (inset) images of PDA-Pt. (c) TEM image of PDA-Pt. (d) SEM and DLS (inset) images of PDA-Pt@PCN. (e) TEM image of PDA-Pt@PCN. (f) Schematic illustration of PDA-Pt@PCN. (g) STEM-HAADF image and the corresponding elemental mapping images of PDA-Pt@PCN. (h) X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) peaks of PDA-Pt and PDA-Pt@PCN. Reproduced with permission from ref. 50. |
The shortcomings of the components that may interfere with each other when platinum is doped are improved.50,74–76 As shown in Fig. 5, Liu et al., who used a similar encapsulation method, added the platinum nanoparticle mimicking catalase to the center of the porphyrin skeleton and innovatively embedded a gold nanoparticle mimicking glucose oxidase into the porphyrin skeleton shell by doping, and then added folic acid to modify it, and finally synthesized a PCN@Pt@PCN-Au-FA composite.52 In addition to catalyzing the endogenous hydrogen peroxide into oxygen conversion, the material also accelerates glucose consumption. It uses self-produced hydrogen peroxide as a substrate, enabling photodynamic therapy to synergize with starvation therapy to enhance treatment efficiency.76 This method is a cascade catalytic model that can be applied to nano-enzyme combination therapy. Cascade catalytic reactions are widespread in organisms. The former reaction product becomes the latter reaction substrate in the chain enzymatic reaction. At the same time, every reaction will produce an amplification effect. The cascade catalytic reaction can significantly improve the reaction efficiency.77,78 Based on this reaction mechanism, Liu et al. constructed a Pt@PCN222-Mn enzyme-like cascade catalytic system, which showed a high activity efficiency of superoxide dismutase and catalase and extremely high active oxygen scavenging ability. This study broadens the development of cascade nanozymes in the biomedical field and opens up new ideas for cascade catalytic reactions in cancer treatment.54
Fig. 5 Schematic for the catalytic cascade-enhanced synergistic cancer therapy driven by dual inorganic nanozyme-engineered porphyrin MOFs (PCNs). Reproduced with permission from ref. 52. |
At present, researchers are not satisfied with the effect of independent PDT treatment and are committed to exploring the combination of PDT and other therapies, such as the combination of PDT and chemotherapy that can reverse the drug resistance of tumor cells.79,80 Liu et al. used an amino-functionalized MOF to deposit porous gold nanoparticles and coated them with platinum nanoenzymes to produce Pt@UiO-66-NH2@Aushell-Ce6, which was combined with photodynamic and photothermal therapy in vitro and in vivo, and achieved sound synergistic therapeutic effects.81 Chen et al. constructed DOX-Pt-tipped Au@ZIF-8 by integrating the anticancer drug DOX and a plasma Pt/Au bimetallic heterostructure into the ZIF-8 backbone. This material has photothermal (PT) and computed tomography (CT) imaging capabilities and can also provide a nanotherapeutic platform having a plasma-enhanced chemiluminescent effect.82 Also of note is image synergy photodynamic therapy.83 However, the complex and difficult-to-target tumor microenvironment has dramatically hindered the research of this method.84,85 Since intracellular glutathione (GSH) often causes drug resistance in cancer cells, and clinically used anticancer drugs do not preferentially accumulate in tumor tissues, doctors have to use high-dose therapeutic drugs during treatment to compensate for non-ideal drug distribution and cell resistance.53,86 Based on the above reasons, as shown in Fig. 6, Wang et al. developed a composite material TBD-Pt(IV)@MOF-199, which can release the encapsulated cisplatin prodrug after cellular uptake. At the same time, the up-regulation of glutathione levels in cancer cells will reduce drug release, thus avoiding the injury of normal cells.87 After entering the body, MOF-199 will consume GSH in cancer cells and dissociate it to release the cisplatin prodrug. Under light, the cisplatin prodrug can produce oxygen and emit bright fluorescence for synergistic image-guided PDT.
Fig. 6 (A) Synthesis of Pt(IV)@MOF-199 and TBD-Pt(IV)@MOF-199 NPs; (B) GSH depletion and hypoxia relief endowed by TBD-Pt(IV)@MOF-199 NPs in the tumor microenvironment for photo-chemotherapy. Reproduced with permission from ref. 87. |
In the clinical treatment of cancer, doctors often need to administer drugs to patients. At present, the common method is to administer drugs by injection. However, although anticancer drugs can kill or inhibit tumor cells, owing to their low selectivity they will also affect normal tissues of the human body. Therefore, patients often suffer severe adverse reactions such as bone marrow suppression and liver and kidney function damage during their treatment. Thus, drug delivery carriers and targeted therapy have received extensive attention from scholars. Currently, the common drug delivery carriers in clinical treatment are liposome preparations, albumin preparations and microsphere preparations. Still, there are problems with these, such as low encapsulation efficiency and drug loading, low in vivo clearance rate, and unstable safety. Based on the above reasons, researchers have begun to use MOF materials with high drug loading, good in vivo clearance effect, and good biocompatibility for drug loading and delivery. It is worth mentioning that the modification of the MOF surface can also endow the composite material with good targeting.
For example, hyaluronic acid, as an acidic mucopolysaccharide, can bind to the CD44 receptor on the surface of the tumor and can promote the endocytosis of hyaluronic acid in tumor cells by binding to the receptor. Therefore, modifying the drug carrier can make the drug carrier attain good tumor targeting and can also relatively prolong its circulation time in vivo.88 In recent years, more and more cancer treatments have matured, but some cancer cells have always been difficult to eradicate, and such cancer cells are often prone to drug resistance.89 At present, the common treatment methods are palliative, so scholars have begun to explore a way to cure such cancers at source by killing cancer mitochondria. Targeting mitochondria is currently considered an excellent way to eradicate drug-resistant cancer cells. It destroys the power source of cancer cells by directly inhibiting mitochondria, thereby inducing cancer cell death.90 Such methods avoid the steps of administration of cancer cells, so they do not awaken the drug resistance mechanism of cancer cells.91 Although this method has good effect, there are still two problems.
First, there is no critical difference between mitochondria of normal cells and cancer cells, so the current drug selectivity for mitochondria is low. Second, the accumulation of drugs in mitochondria is low, and sometimes there is a problem that mitochondria cannot be killed entirely. For this reason, as shown in Fig. 7, Xing et al. used the MOF material ZIF-90, which has particular targeting and ATP responsiveness to mitochondria, to encapsulate drugs for killing tumor cell mitochondria.55,92,93 In terms of drug selection, they chose to encapsulate cisplatin (DDP) for administration. Fig. 7 shows that SEM, TEM, XRD and DLS characterization revealed that ZIF-90 had a high loading capacity for DDP. Therefore, eventually, they formed a ZIF-90@DDP composite for clinical trials.94
Fig. 7 (a) ZIF-90@DDP preparation and (b) the probable mechanism of mitochondria-targeting zeolitic imidazole frameworks that bypass the resistance pathway of DDP in the resistance human ovarian cancer cell line A2780/DDP. The concentration of Pt in cancer cells and mitochondria of (c) A2780 and (d) A2780/DDP incubated with DDP or ZIF-90@DDP for 4 or 12 h, respectively. Mean ± SD (n = 3), **P < 0.01. Cell viability of A2780 and A2780/DDP incubated with (e) DDP and (f) ZIF-90@DDP after 24 h at different concentrations of Pt. Mean ± SD (n = 3), *P < 0.05. Reproduced with permission from ref. 94. The MOF materials mentioned in this paper are classified according to the role and application of platinum in Table 1. |
The role of platinum | MOF type | Synthetic method | Applications | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
Generation of reactive oxygen species | PCN-222-Pt | Theoretical calculations | Antimicrobial therapy | 57 and 59–70 |
Modifying effect | NH2-MIL-125-GO-Pt | Hydrothermal method | Antimicrobial therapy | 58 |
In situ reduction method | ||||
Catalyze H2O2 into O2 | Sm-TCPP-Pt/TPP | — | Photodynamic therapy | 51, 72 and 73 |
Catalyze H2O2 into O2 | PCN-224/Pt | In situ reduction method | Sonodynamic therapy | 56, 72 and 73 |
Catalyze H2O2 into O2 | PDA-Pt@PCN-FA | In situ reduction method | Photodynamic therapy | 50 |
Catalyze H2O2 into O2 | PCN@Pt@PCN-Au-FA | — | Cascade catalytic reaction | 52 and 74–76 |
Catalytic H2O2 | Pt@PCN222-Mn | — | Cascade catalytic reaction | 54, 77 and 78 |
Nano-enzyme | Pt@UiO-66-NH2@Aushell-Ce6 | One-step solution-phase strategy | Photodynamic combined photothermal therapy | 79–81 |
Nano-enzyme | DOX-Pt-tipped Au@ZIF-8 | — | Chemo-phototherapy | 82–85 |
Oxygen generation | TBD-Pt(IV)@MOF-199 | — | Image synergy photodynamic therapy | 53, 86 and 87 |
Anti-cancer drugs | ZIF-90@DDP | One-step coating | Destroying tumor mitochondria | 55 and 88–94 |
Footnote |
† These authors contributed equally to this work. |
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2023 |