Abstract
Background Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor disease and
the leading cause of female mortality. The evolution of nanomaterials
science opens the opportunity to improve traditional cancer therapies,
enhancing therapy efficiency and reducing side effects. Methods and
major results Herein, protein cages conceived as enzymatic nanoreactors
were designed and produced by using virus-like nanoparticles (VLPs) from
Brome Mosaic Virus (BMV) and containing the catalytic activity of
glucose oxidase enzyme (GOx). The GOx enzyme was encapsulated into the
BMV capsid (VLP-GOx), and the resulting enzymatic nanoreactors were
coated with human serum albumin (VLP-GOx@HSA) for breast tumor cell
targeting. The effect of the synthesized GOx nanoreactors on breast
tumor cell lines was studied in vitro. Both nanoreactor preparations
VLP-GOx and VLP-GOx@HSA showed to be highly cytotoxic for breast tumor
cell cultures. Cytotoxicity for human embryonic kidney cells was also
found. The monitoring of nanoreactors treatement on triple negative
breast cancer cells showed an evident production of oxygen by the
catalase antioxidant enzyme induced by the high production of hydrogen
peroxide from GOx activity. Conclusions and implications The
nanoreactors containing GOx activity are fully suitable for cytotoxicity
generation in tumor cells. The HSA functionalization of the VLP-GOx
nanoreactors could result in a prevailing strategy to improve selective
cancer targeting. The GOx containing enzymatic nanoreactors seems to be
an interesting alternative to improve the current cancer therapy. In
vivo studies are on going to reinforce the effectiveness of this
treatment strategy.