Drug resistance-free cytotoxic nanodrugs in composites for cancer therapy

Abstract

Drug resistance is a major cause of treatment failure for small-molecule cancer chemotherapies, despite the advances in combination therapies, drug delivery systems, epigenetic drugs, and proteolysistargeting chimeras. Herein, we report the use of a drug resistance-free cytotoxic nanodrug as an alternative to small-molecule drugs. The present nanodrugs comprise 2 nm core gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) covered completely with multivalent hydrocarbon chains to a final diameter of similar to 10 nm as single drug molecules. This hydrophobic drug-platform was delivered in composite form (similar to 35 nm) with block-copolymer like other small-molecular drugs. Upon uptake by cells, the nanodrugs enhanced the intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species and induced apoptosis, presumably reflecting multivalent interactions between aliphatic chains and intracellular biomolecules. No resistance to our novel nanodrug was observed following multiple treatment passages and the potential for use in cancer therapy was verified in a breast cancer patient-derived xenograft mouse model. These findings provide insight into the use of nano-scaled compounds as agents that evade drug resistance to cancer therapy.