Theranostic Niosomes as a Promising Tool for Combined Therapy and Diagnosis: "All-in-One" Approach

Because of the great achievement and progress made for the generation of novel nanostructures, theranostic nanoplatforms have been the trending topic because of their intensive capability of therapy and diagnosis. Hence, theranostics have also recently been a generic strategy for personalized medicine. Moreover, traditional therapy modalities limit the use of chemotherapeutic agents for every patient, and this requires more effective drug-carrier systems by designing the formulation of drug in a specified way. Herein, we performed a generic theranostic platform in an "all-in-one" concept by the combination of two therapy modalities with an active targeting approach. To achieve this, 10 nm gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and protoporphyrin DC (PpIX) were encapsulated into folic acid (FA-)tagged niosome vesicles. The resulting AuNP-PpIX-FA niosomes were characterized, and their particle size was93 +/- 17 nm with a high surface charge and encapsulation efficiency (around 85%). In the case of bioapplications for AuNP-PpIX-FA niosomes, folate-receptor-positive [FR(+)] human cervical cancer (HeLa) and FR-negative [FR(-)] human alveolar type II (A549)-like cell lines were examined with the relative control groups of theranostic vesicles. By testing the toxicity of vesicles, nontoxic concentrations were successfully introduced to the cell with the combined treatment of radiotherapy and photodynamic therapy. On the other hand, the cellular uptake of niosomes also showed great potential for FR(+) HeLa cells as the theranostic platform with an all-in-one approach.