Professor Zhu Junjie's research group and collaborators of Nanjing University have made important progress in the research of metal organic framework nanomaterials for cancer multimodal treatment

Zhu Junjie, Professor of School of chemistry and chemical engineering, Nanjing University, recently made important progress in the research of metal organic framework nanomaterials for cancer multimodal treatment His research paper "a catalyst like metal organic framework nanohybrid for O 2 evolving synergic chemotherapeutics" was published online in German Applied Chemistry (DOI: 10.1002/anie.201902612), which was completed by Zhu Junjie and Chen Xiaoyuan of the National Institutes of health Dr he Zhimei, Dr Wang Chen and Dr Huang Xiaolin from the school of chemistry and chemical engineering of Nantong University are the co authors of the paper Professor Zhu Junjie, Professor Dai Yunlu from the University of Macau, Dr Yu guocan and Professor Chen Xiaoyuan from the National Institutes of health of the United States are the co authors of the paper Nanjing University is the first communication unit In recent years, Professor Zhu Junjie and Professor Chen Xiaoyuan have made a series of progress in biomarker detection and nano diagnosis and treatment (theranomics 2018, 8, 3461 – 3473; small 2019, 15, e1804131) In the vicinity of fast-growing tumors, the oxygen supply of abnormal blood vessels is insufficient, forming the characteristics of serious hypoxia in tumor tissue Furthermore, hypoxia can induce tumor migration, invasion and metastasis, and restrict the efficacy of photodynamic therapy, radiotherapy and other aerobic treatment In order to improve the sensitivity of hypoxic cells to radiotherapy, we can start from the following two aspects: 1) improve the oxygen content in tumor; 2) materials based on high atomic number elements (such as Au, Bi, HF, etc.) have large X-ray energy attenuation coefficient, which can effectively deposit X-ray energy in tumor, so as to make the best use of radiotherapy radiation In clinic, radiotherapy is usually combined with other treatment methods such as surgery or chemotherapy to effectively eradicate the tumor and prevent its recurrence At present, although there have been a lot of reports about the synergistic treatment, most of the anti-tumor effects are not good because of the resistance of tumor to treatment In order to overcome this problem, the two research groups worked closely together to propose a strategy of in-situ catalytic oxygen production Based on the porphyrin metal organic framework material (MOF) @ gold nanoparticles (AuNP) nanocomposite (mof-au), the combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy for oxygen enhancement was realized In this work, gold nanoparticles modification has the following advantages: 1) enhancing the sensitivity of hypoxic cancer cells to X-ray; 2) giving MOF relative stability to prevent premature degradation in the delivery process; 3) enabling MOF to have catalase like activity, effectively catalyzing the production of oxygen from tumor metabolite H 2O 2, improving the oxygen dependent radiotherapy effect The mof-au still has a highly ordered porous structure of MOF, which can be used as an efficient loading agent of adriamycin hydrochloride In vitro and in vivo studies have confirmed that mof-au nanocomposites loaded with drugs have radiosensitization effect, can alleviate the lack of oxygen in tumor, significantly inhibit tumor growth, reduce systemic toxicity, and provide a novel strategy for multimodal cancer treatment This research work was supported by NSFC (21834004, 21427807), international cooperation fund of Ministry of science and Technology (2016yfe0130100) and postdoctoral research fund (2018m640472).