Nanodiamond Facilitated Drug Delivery for Drug Resistant Breath Cancers

Nanodiamond (ND) has been considered as a biocompatible and feasible platform for efficient cancer drug delivery. Examples have been successfully demonstrated for various cellular and animal models. However, to date, very few or none studies had included the assessment on the effects and efficiency in a quantitative fashion; and the transportation of these ND-drugs to the cancer/tumor sites are still in a less understood state. In cancer therapy, drug resistance may arise due to intercellular microenvironment, cytoskeletal structure, and drug resistance genes causing limited therapeutic effect in cancer treatment.<br/>In this study, we use nanodiamond (ND) as a carrier to improve drug delivery in the 3D cellular model which has been observed drug resistant characterization due to the structure of cellular model. The aim of this study is to compare the penetration ability of ND-drug complex and free anticancer drug treatment in 2D and 3D breast cancerous cells model (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231). Several variations of the Multi cellular tumor spheroid (MCTS) cocultures were used to examine the effect of the extra cellular matrix (ECM) to the drug delivery and drug entering mechanisms. ND-drug complex is formed by conjugating Human Serum Albumin (HSA) and doxorubicin (DOX) with ND. Cytotoxicity of the drug complex is determined by MTT assay and Quantitative analysis in 2D cellular model. Growth inhibition assay evaluated the drug efficacy in 3D cellular model. Results show that ND-complexes are more efficient to deliver the drug in 3D cellular model.