The platinum-containing chemotherapeutic cisplatin is the first-line treatment for many types of cancer, but results in a myriad of disparaging dose-limiting side effects, such as nephrotoxicity and neurotoxicity. Nanomaterials have shown great promise in selectively delivering chemotherapeutics to tumors to reduce these side effects and to increase therapeutic indices. As reported in JACS, the Lin Group has developed a novel nanovector platform based on nanoscale metal-organic frameworks, NMOFs, for delivering chemotherapeutics and imaging contrast agents.
NMOFs are materials crafted from metals and organic bridging ligands, and can be engineered to contain reactive functional groups. In this study, the amino groups incorporated into the NMOFs were used to graft optical imaging contrast agents or platinum-containing chemotherapeutics. These modified NMOFs were coated in silica to reduce premature release of imaging contrast agents or chemotherapeutics before arriving at the tumor sites. Preliminary in vitro tests showed that these NMOFs could effectively cause cell death in human colon cancer cell cultures with an efficacy similar to cisplatin. The Lin Group hopes to further modify this strategy to deliver other cancer drugs and imaging contrast agents.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a new class of molecule-based hybrid materials that have shown great promise for a number of applications including nonlinear optics, gas storage, catalysis, biomedical imaging, and drug delivery. Recent efforts on MOF research are steered toward synthesizing materials based on elaborately designed organic bridging ligands. As the organic bridging ligands become more elaborate and large, the resulting MOFs tend to experience significant framework distortion upon solvent removal.
As published in Angewandte Chemie, Dr. Liqing Ma in the Wenbin Lin Group reports a novel strategy to rigidify MOFs via unusual interlocking and interpenetration of networks of different dimensionality. His results have significant implications on enhancing gas uptake by MOFs, as such rigidification drastically increases permanent porosity and robustness of MOFs.