Qiao Jiang

Although a multitude of promising anti-cancer drugs have been developed over the past 50 years, effective delivery of the drugs to diseased cells remains a challenge. Recently, nanoparticles have been used as drug delivery vehicles due to their high delivery efficiencies and the possibility to circumvent cellular drug resistance. However, the lack of biocompatibility and inability to engineer spatially addressable surfaces for multi-functional activity remains an obstacle to their widespread use. Here we present a novel drug carrier system based on self-assembled, spatially addressable DNA origami nanostructures that confronts these limitations. Doxorubicin, a well-known anti-cancer drug, was non-covalently attached to DNA origami nanostructures through intercalation. A high level of drug loading efficiency was achieved, and the complex exhibited prominent cytotoxicity not only to regular human breast adenocarcinoma cancer cells (MCF 7), but more importantly to doxorubicin-resistant cancer cells, inducing a remarkable reversal of phenotype resistance. With the DNA origami drug delivery vehicles, the cellular internalization of doxorubicin was increased, which contributed to the significant enhancement of cell-killing activity to doxorubicin-resistant MCF 7 cells. Presumably, the activity of doxorubicin-loaded DNA origami inhibits lysosomal acidification, resulting in cellular redistribution of the drug to action sites. Our results suggest that DNA origami has immense potential as an efficient, biocompatible drug carrier and delivery vehicle in the treatment of cancer.

We report a label-free fluorescent strategy to study the distribution and stability of DNA origami nanostructures in live, cellular systems, using carbazole-based biscyanine as a probe molecule which has the characteristic property of restriction of intramolecular rotation (RIR) induced emission.

A self-assembled DNA origami (DO)-gold nanorod (GNR) complex, which is a dual-functional nanotheranostics constructed by decorating GNRs onto the surface of DNA origami, is demonstrated. After 24 h incubation of two structured DO-GNR complexes with human MCF7 breast cancer cells, significant enhancement of cell uptake is achieved compared to bare GNRs by two-photon luminescence imaging. Particularly, the triangle shaped DO-GNR complex exhibits optimal cellular accumulation. Compared to GNRs, improved photothermolysis against tumor cells is accomplished for the triangle DO-GNR complex by two-photon laser or NIR laser irradiation. Moreover, the DO-GNR complex exhibits enhanced antitumor efficacy compared with bare GNRs in nude mice bearing breast tumor xenografts. The results demonstrate that the DO-GNR complex can achieve optimal two-photon cell imaging and photothermal effect, suggesting a promising candidate for cancer diagnosis and therapy both in vitro and in vivo.