Evaluation of the Antitumor and Radiosensitizing Activities of Zinc Oxide-Caffeic Acid Nanoparticles

Abstract

Although great achievements have been made in the field of cancer therapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy remain the mainstay cancer therapeutic modalities. Over the last decade, a growing interest in the improvement of radiation therapies has led to the development of nanomaterials as radiosensitizer. Nanomedicine has advantages over conventional cancer therapeutics such as multi-functionality, efficient drug delivery, and controlled release of the drug cargos. It can improve therapeutic benefits by reducing systemic side effects and/or increasing drug accumulation inside tumors by using nanomaterials based on organic, inorganic, protein, lipid, glycan compounds, synthetic polymers, and viruses. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) possess insignificant toxicity on normal healthy human cells, and demonstrating great advances in the medical field, particularly in the cancer applications. Modifications of ZnO NPs to potentiate its biological activities, were applied via conjugation with caffeic acid (CA), which is a natural phytochemical phenolic constituent in plants, which exhibits antioxidant, and scavenging power o