Antitumor Efficacy of Gallic Acid-Coated Gallium Nanoparticles on Hepatocellular Tumor Model

Abstract

Despite decades of research into molecularly targeted therapies, including the recent advent of multimodal treatments, the armamentarium against HCC is at best discouraging. None of the established systemic targeted agents, including sorafenib, have been translated into clinically meaningful improved patient survival. As such, HCC remains a dreadful cancer. The understanding of all hepatocarcinogenic pathways is therefore critical to yield new and effective therapies for HCC. Specifically, the exploration of epigenetic and genetic factors may more imminently result in faster progress towards alternative therapies. These efforts will require closer collaborations, not only between various medical disciplines, but also with basic molecular biology scientists, immunologists, pharmacological industry, and government bodies. Nanomedicine is an emerging form of therapy that focuses on targeted drug delivery and improvement of the treatment efficacy, while reducing detrimental side effects to normal tissues. In this scenario, biogenic phytofabricated MNPs have been considered excellent safe tumor-targeting vehicles. Intriguingly, the use of NPs as drug delivery carriers provides an effective method in which multiple cytotoxic agents can be safely delivered to cancer tissue to simultaneously target multiple cancer hallmarks at once, and hence the efficacy of cancer treatments could be improved drastically. The present work provides a rationale for the design of an alternative oncology trial with the aim of fighting hepatocellular carcinogenesis using bio-inspired green nanotechnology. Beyond this, a novel biogenic Ga-based nanocomplex, namely gallic acid-coated gallium nanoparticles (GA-GaNPs), was synthesized and further nano-verified. The ultimate goal is to test the possible therapeutic antineoplastic efficacy of GA-GaNPs both in vitro upon HepG-2 cell line and in vivo using a chemically-induced hepatocarcinogenesis in an animal model. In addition, such trial also aimed to validate whether the combination of GA-GaNPs with CDDP could enhance the therapeutic antineoplastic efficacy of this novel nanocomplex.