Advanced Tissue Engineering Scaffolds Incorporated with Gold Nanoparticle-Based Theranostics for Postoperative Cancer Patients

Cancer causes millions of human deaths each year and surgery has been the most commonly used method for treating many types of cancers. After surgical removal of the tumor, new tissues need to be formed at the resection site for restoring body functions. Scaffold-based tissue engineering has emerged as a viable approach for regenerating tissues in the body. Another major issue for many cancer patients, such as suffers of gastrointestinal (GI) tract cancer, is the high cancer recurrence rate. Therefore, new strategies should be investigated to detect and treat recurrent cancer for patients after their initial cancer treatment. In nanomedicine, nanodevices that provide both diagnostic and therapeutic functions (the so-called “theranostics”) appear to be highly promising for the early detection and effective treatment of cancers. In the current study, a new concurrent electrospinning and co-axial electrospray technology was developed for fabricating advanced tissue engineering scaffolds incorporated with gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based theranostics for treating cancer patients. Model scaffolds designed for GI tract cancer patients were made using this technology. It was shown that a controlled release of AuNP-based theranostics could be achieved for the advanced scaffolds. The study using NIH/3T3 mouse fibroblasts indicated good biocompatibility of released theranostics. HeLa cells, which have a high-level of folate receptor (FR) expression, and MCF-7 cells, which have a low-level FR expression and thus could provide a negative control in the current study, were employed for investigating the designed functions of the theranostics. <i>In vitro</i> investigations showed that the theranostics released from scaffolds could provide both diagnostic and therapeutic functions, including strongly amplified Raman signals via the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effect, active targeting, cellular imaging and photothermal therapy for HeLa cells. Our other studies also showed the potential of these advanced scaffold for GI tract tissue regeneration. Altogether, these novel scaffolds are highly promising for offering the treatment for postoperative cancer patients.