The research group led by Professor Wu Daocheng from the Biological Information Center of the School of Life Science and Technology has made great progress in joint chemotherapy research on tumor. They use compound nanocarrier of "mulberry" shaped structure assembled by two types of nanoglobules that carry different chemotherapy medicines and make the joint antitumor effect of medicines raise greatly. The result was published online on the website of Biomaterials on November 15. Doctoral student Li Ke is the first author of the paper. Professor Wu Daocheng is the communication author. XJTU is the unit of the paper's first author and communication author. This is the second paper of the research group published in Biomaterials since 2011.

At present, tumor chemotherapy is easy to generate drug resistance. The joint chemotherapy of two or more kinds of medicines is an ordinary clinical method. But because these medicines have different natures, after they enter human bodies, they do not arrive in the tumor positions at the same time and the time of entering tumor and doses are different so the treatment effect is greatly reduced. As to these problems, the research firstly packs two kinds of chemotherapy medicines that have synergic roles Adriamycin and Apogossypolone (ApoG2) into nanoparticles by using hyaluronic acid and cation starch that have tumor targeting, then assemble them into compound nanocarriers of "mulberry" shaped structure.

Because the hyaluronic acid of outer layer has tumor targeting, the carrier can bring two kinds of medicines to tumor cells at the same time. After it enters the cells, the hyaluronic acid globules of outer layer will leave carrier and release Adriamycin to karyon and inhibit DNA growth and cation starch globules releases ApoG2 to mitochondrion and inhibits Bcl-2 protein and plays the role of dual cure. Experiment result shows that only one-fifth of ordinary clinical dose of the two kinds of medicines can have 1.5 times as much as the cure effect of the joint chemotherapy of former two kinds of medicines and the toxic side effects are reduced greatly (can't be detected). The carrier can adjust the proportion of the two kinds of medicines by design and achieve the best cure effect. The research has important value for the future clinical joint chemotherapy.

In addition, in recent two years, the research group published 6 papers on the world-famous magazines J Mater Chem B and Nanoscale (all in SCI area). The unit of the first authors and communication authors is XJTU.