Hyaluronic Acid-Modified Gold-Polydopamine Complex Nanomedicine for Tumor-Targeting Drug Delivery and Chemo-Photothermal-Therapy Synergistic Therapy

Multifunctional nanomedicines for tumor therapy have received more and more attention. Here, we developed a tumor-targeting and pH/near-infrared (NIR) dual stimulus-responsive nanodrug delivery system (PDA-Au@HA/DOX). Hyaluronic acid (HA) was decorated on the nanoparticle surface, which endowed the system with tumor-targeting properties by specifically binding with a CD44 receptor overexpressed in various tumor cells. The excellent photothermal performance of polydopamine (PDA) and gold nanoshells under NIR irradiation could destroy tumor cells on the one hand and accelerate doxorubicin (DOX) release on the other. The results of both in vitro and in vivo antitumor studies demonstrated that the nanomedicine exhibited outstanding synergistic effects through chemotherapy and photothermal therapy. The cell viability in PDA-Au@HA/DOX with an NIR irradiation group was only 25.1%. The relative tumor volume in the tumor-bearing mice treated with PDA-Au@HA/DOX plus NIR was 0.3 ± 0.1, which was the lowest in all groups. Therefore, our reasonable design of nanoplatform would be a promising tumor-targeting drug delivery system for synergistic chemo-photothermal tumor therapy.