Dmitri Golberg of the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and colleagues have demonstrated how functionalizing boron nitride (BN) nanotubes with mesoporous silica allows them to carry out intracellular delivery of chemotherapy agents.

The team has demonstrated proof of principle by loading up their BN@silica hybrids with the well-established anticancer drug, doxorubicin, commonly used in leukemia and lymphoma. The use of a nanotube host should allow much better targeting with such agents, which can have serious side effects. In the case of doxorubicin, life-threatening damage to the heart tissue can occur.

The team has shown that their hybrid improves the effectiveness of the drug in killing LNcap prostate cancer cells compared with unloaded nanotubes as controls.

• Boron nitride nanotubes functionalized with mesoporous silica for intracellular delivery of chemotherapy drug,
  Xia Li, Chunyi Zhi, Nobutaka Hanagata, Maho Yamaguchi, Yoshio Bando, Dmitri Golberg,
  Chem. Commun. 2013.
  DOI: 10.1039/C3CC42743A