Zinc-based metal-organic frameworks as efficient carriers for anticancer drug to reduce toxicity and increase efficacy

The rational design of a specific co-drug delivery platform that can address the unavoidable resistance, toxic side effects and low targeting efficiency of traditional cancer treatments is of great meaningful. Herein, Zn-based MOF-zeolitic imidazole framework-90 (ZIF-90) was selected as the drug delivery carrier, with the cancer therapeutic drug mercaptopurine (6-MP) and glucose oxidase (GOD) as the drug models, hyaluronic acid (HA) was used for protection and targeted delivery, which designed and fabricated an intelligent drug delivery platform (6-MP@ZIF-90@GOD@HA). This platform aims to reduce the toxic side effects of 6-MP and enhance its efficacy while improving the targeting ability of GOD, thereby further enhancing the treatment outcome. Notably, results from both in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that the targeted synergistic chemo/reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated/starvation therapy inhibited the cancer cell growth while reducing the chemotherapy toxicity, which provides new possibilities for the development of more precise and effective treatment strategies. Graphical abstract