Graphene is a two-dimensional material, which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms connected by sp2. Graphene is composed of carbon skeleton and does not contain any heavy metal elements, so it has good biocompatibility and low toxicity. At present, the research and application of graphene mainly focus on sensors, solar cells, seawater desalination, preparation of hydrogen storage materials, aerospace and other fields. Of course, graphene (generally graphene oxide) has also achieved some good results in the biomedical field. In particular, there are many reports on antibacterial research using graphene oxide. Of course, using graphene to treat cancer has also become a hot field.
1. Graphene oxide converts near-infrared light into heat energy to heat cancer in vivo (photothermal therapy).
Graphene can absorb near-infrared light to a certain extent, and can convert the absorbed light into heat, which will promote the local temperature rise of tumor tissue, thus leading to tumor thermal death. This is called photothermal therapy.
2. Graphene oxide is used as a drug carrier to realize efficient chemotherapy of tumors.
Conventional chemotherapy drugs are often not very water-soluble and have no targeting. Long-term use will accidentally injure normal cells and make cancer cells resistant. Graphene oxide has both hydrophilic groups and hydrophobic sp2 carbon skeleton, so it is amphiphilic. Through π ~ π stacking, anticancer drugs can be loaded to form nanoparticles, and then the drugs are mainly enriched in tumor tissues through passive EPR effect (tumor tissue enrichment effect), thus reducing the toxic and side effects. In addition, if graphene oxide is modified into an active targeting molecule, specific cancer cell killing ability can be achieved by combining active and passive targeting.
Of course, it can also be combined with the photothermal therapy of graphene oxide to realize the synergistic treatment of photothermal and drug chemotherapy of tumors, thus greatly improving the treatment efficiency. In addition, graphene oxide can also modify the carrier nucleic acid to realize the combined therapy of gene therapy and chemotherapy.