Mesoporous silica decorated with platinum nanoparticles for drug delivery and synergistic electrodynamic-chemotherapy

Electrodynamic therapy (EDT) is a conceptually new cancer treatment approach recently proposed by our group. During EDT, the electro-driven catalytic reaction would occur on the surface of platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) under the direct current (DC) or square-wave alternating current (AC) electric field. To further extend the potential of EDT, we hereby designed mesoporous silica-based nanocomposites decorated with PtNPs and loaded with anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) for synergistic electrodynamic-chemotherapy. Such silica-based nanocomposites could enable homogenous killing of large-sized tumors (over 500 mm3) and realize remarkable tumor destruction efficacy at a relatively low quantity of electricity. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to combine EDT and chemotherapy to develop a synergetic nanoplatform, openning a new dimension for the design of other EDT-based anticancer strategies.