Journal of Nanobiotechnology volume 15 , Article number: 53 Cite this article. Metrics details. In addition to conventional chemotherapeutics, nucleic acid-based therapeutics like antisense oligodeoxynucleotides AS-ODN represent a novel approach for the treatment of bladder cancer BCa. In the present study, pristine MWCNT and MWCNT functionalized with hydrophilic moieties were synthesized and then investigated regarding their physicochemical characteristics, dispersibility, biocompatibility, cellular uptake and mucoadhesive properties.
Bladder cancer BCa is the most common malignancy of the urogenital system and the ninth most common cancer worldwide and thus poses a great challenge to the health care sector [ 1 , 2 ]. BCa treatment depends on tumor stage and prognosis of the patient. This adjuvant therapy is directly instilled through a catheter into the bladder, which is ideally suitable for such an intravesical drug delivery due to its hollow structure [ 3 ]. Compared to a systemic drug administration, intravesical therapy ensures higher drug concentrations at the tumor site while minimizing systemic side effects [ 3 ].
However, the intravesical drug application has to overcome some obstacles. The most prominent drawback is the low dwell time of the therapeutics due to continuous urine production and flushing during voiding.
Furthermore, poor adhesion of the drugs to the urothelium and deprived penetration into it result in a decreased absorption and lower effective concentration of the therapeutic.
Consequently, repeated instillations via catheterizations are required, which is inconvenient for the patient and may cause inflammatory reactions, bladder irritation and infections [ 3 ]. Finally, failure of chemotherapy could be evoked by the up-regulation of genes associated with drug resistance, which in turn provide attractive targets for molecular therapy [ 4 , 5 ]. Complementary to conventional treatment options such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, therapeutic nucleic acids including antisense oligodeoxynucleotides AS-ODN and small interfering RNAs siRNAs have emerged as a promising strategy to modify the expression of such tumor-related genes.
