Advanced tissue engineering scaffolds incorporated with theranostics for cancer cell targeting and photothermal therapy

Abstract

Post-surgery cancer patients face high cancer recurrence rates and hence the early detection and treatment of recurring cancer are vital for them. They may also need tissue regeneration at the original tumor site. Au-based theranostics can provide diagnostic and therapeutic functions in oncology due to their unique properties, and electrospun scaffolds have many advantages for tissue regeneration. In this study, advanced theranostics-incorporated scaffolds were fabricated using concurrent electrospinning and co-axial electrospray and their performance was studied. Electrosprayed, core-shell structured PLGA50/50 microspheres containing Au-based theranostics were found evenly distributed in electrospun PLGA75/25 nanofibrous scaffolds. Experiments were conducted for theranostics release studies by immersing advanced scaffolds in simulated body fluid for different times and released theranostics were analyzed. In vitro biological experiments were performed using HeLa cells to investigate the cancer cell targeting ability and photothermal therapy of released theranostics. Also, both HeLa cells and MCF-7 cells (the control) were incubated separately with sterilized scaffolds. Results showed that the advanced scaffolds could release theranostics in a controlled manner and released theranostics could provide cancer cell detection and photothermal therapy functions.