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Session: Technical Session I

Nanomedicine and Nanoscale Delivery I

Tuesday, July 9, 2024
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM CET
Location: Sala Europa
Title: "Urease-powered nanobots for radionuclide bladder cancer therapy".

Bladder cancer treatment via intravesical drug administration achieves reasonable survival rates but suffers from low therapeutic efficacy. To address the latter, self-propelled nanoparticles or nanobots have been proposed, taking advantage of their enhanced diffusion and mixing capabilities in urine compared to conventional drugs or passive nanoparticles. In this study, we evaluated radiolabelled mesoporous silica-based urease-powered nanobots in an orthotopic mouse model of bladder cancer. In vivo and ex vivo results demonstrated enhanced nanobot accumulation at the tumor site, with an eightfold increase revealed by positron emission tomography in vivo. Label-free optical contrast, based on polarization-dependent scattered light-sheet microscopy of cleared bladders, confirmed nanobot penetration of the tumor ex vivo. Treating tumor-bearing mice with intravesically administered radio-iodinated nanobots for radionuclide therapy resulted in approximately a 90% reduction in tumor size, positioning nanobots as efficient delivery nanosystems for bladder cancer therapy.