A Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) Fenton Nanoagent-Enabled Nanocatalytic Cancer Therapy in Synergy with Autophagy Inhibition

Nanocatalytic medicine has been developed recently to trigger intratumoral generation of highly toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) for cancer therapy, which, unfortunately, suffers from compromised therapeutic efficacy due to a self-protective mechanism, autophagy, of cancer cells to mitigate oxidative damage. In this work, during the efforts of ROS generation by nanocatalytic medicine, a pharmacological autophagy inhibition strategy is implemented for augmenting ROS-induced oxidative damage for synergetic cancer therapy. An iron-containing metal-organic framework [MOF(Fe)] nanocatalyst as a peroxidase mimic is used to catalyze the generation of highly oxidizing •OH radicals specifically within cancer cells, while chloroquine is applied to deacidify lysosomes and inhibit autophagy, cutting off the self-protection pathway under severe oxidative stress. Cancer cells fail to extract their components to detoxicate and strengthen themselves, finally succumbing to the ROS-induced oxidative damage during nanocatalytic therapy. Both in vitro and in vivo results demonstrate the synergy between nanocatalytic therapy and autophagy inhibition, suggesting that such a combined strategy is applicable to amplify tumor-specific oxidative damage and may be informative to future design of therapeutic regimen.