Graphene in Biomedicine: Opportunities and Challenges

Liangzhu Feng; Zhuang Liu

Nanomedicine. 2011;6(2):317-324.

Graphene for Drug Delivery & Cancer Therapy

The exploration of graphene in drug delivery and biomedicine was first initiated by the Hongjie Dai group at Stanford University (CA, USA) in 2008.^[2,3] Motivated by the successes of using carbon nanotubes for a number of biomedical applications,^[56] they started to wonder whether graphene may also be an interesting material in drug delivery. An amine-terminated, branched PEG was used to functionalize GO, affording PEGylated nano-graphene (NGO-PEG) highly stable in physiological solutions. Aromatic anticancer drugs (e.g., SN38 and doxorubicin) were effectively loaded on the graphene surface via ϖ-ϖ stacking for intracellular drug delivery. Ultra-high drug loading efficiency was achieved owing to the extremely large surface area of graphene, which has every atom exposed on its surface.^[2,3] Since then, several other groups have also paid attention to the graphene-based drug loading and delivery systems and published a number of interesting results.^[5–7]

The in vivo study of graphene in animals was not reported until a recent paper by our group. In this work, PEGylated nano-graphene was labeled by a NIR fluorescence dye for in vivo fluorescence imaging, as the intrinsic photoluminescence of nano-graphene is too weak for in vivo imaging. The in vivo behaviors of NGO-PEG was investigated in several different xenograft tumor mouse models, showing surprisingly high passive uptake of graphene in tumors.^[8] Utilizing the strong optical absorbance of NGO-PEG in the NIR region, we carried out an in vivo photothermal treatment to kill tumors in the mouse model and achieved an ultra-efficient tumor photothermal ablation effect by intravenous administration of NGO-PEG and low-power NIR laser irradiation on the tumor. This is the first success of using graphene for in vivo cancer therapy. A later work by another group further showed that nano-graphene was significantly better than carbon nanotubes in inducing photothermal death of U251 human glioma cells in vitro.^[57]

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Cite this: Graphene in Biomedicine: Opportunities and Challenges - Medscape - Mar 01, 2011.

Abstract and Introduction
Brief Introduction to Graphene Physics & Chemistry
Graphene for Biosensing
Graphene for Drug Delivery & Cancer Therapy
Is Graphene Toxic?
Graphene versus Carbon Nanotubes in Biomedicine
Conclusion & Future Perspective
References
Sidebar

Table 1. Biomedical applications of graphene.
Application	Example	Ref.
*Graphene-based biosensors*
Optical sensing	Oligonucleotides (e.g., ssDNA, molecular beacons and aptamers)	[13,17,26,27,29,36,68]
	Proteins (e.g., thrombin)	[20,50,68]
	Heavy metal ions (e.g., Ag)	[69]
	Pathogen (e.g., rotavirus)	[15]
Electrochemical sensing	Biomacromolecules (e.g., DNA, hemoglobin and α-fetoprotein)	[46,70–72]
	Enzymes (e.g., horseradish peroxidase and glucose oxidase)	[10,40,49,73]
	Small molecules (e.g., hydrogen peroxide, β-nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, dopamine and glucose)	[11,50,74,75]
Electronic devices	Proteins, DNA, bacterium and pH values	[4,14,39,43,44,53,76]
Matrix for mass spectra	Small molecules (e.g., cocaine and adenosine) or DNA	[12,19,51]
*Graphene for potential cancer therapy*
Drug delivery	Loading of chemotherapy drugs (e.g., doxorubicin and SN38)	[2,3,5–7]
Drug delivery	In vitro cancer cell targeting (e.g., using antibodies, peptide and folate acid)	[3,5,7]
Photothermal therapy	In vitro cancer cell killing under near-infrared light, better than carbon nanotubes	[57]
Photothermal therapy	Ultra-high in vivo tumor uptake and efficient photothermal ablation of cancer in mice	[8]
*Other applications*
Fluorescence imaging probes		[3,30]
Antibacteria papers		[16,77]
Tissue engineering scaffolds		[77–80]

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