Hollow carbon nanospheres for targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics in breast cancer therapy

Abstract

We present novel hollow carbon nanospheres (HCNs) for targeted breast cancer therapy. The HCNs have a 40 nm-cavity for drugs loading, and the surface is covered with “natural” primary amine without any exogenous modification, equipped to conjugate with functional biomolecules. After modification with anti-HER2 antibody and loading of Doxorubicin (DOX) to the HCNs, the HER2@HCNs/DOX can specifically access HER2-positive breast cancer cells and significantly suppress the cells in vitro, causing ∼60% reduction of the volume of the HER2-positive tumours in vivo. The HCNs show great promise to become a multifunctional carrier in the field of high-loading capacity drug delivery for cancer therapy.