JAEPRE23 -31- Chiral photocatalytic nanozymes for efficient ROS-mediated cancer therapy (CHIRALZYMES)

Nanozymes or artificial enzymes, are nanomaterials with enzyme-like activity, meaning high catalytic activities and ability to accelerate biochemical reactions. Among their different field of applications, they hold great promise for cancer treatment and particularly, chemodynamic (CDT) therapy. This discipline is devoted to the activation of cancer cell death mechanisms by means of oxidative stress. Since cancer cells are more sensitive to exogenous reactive oxygen species (ROS), CDT use nanozymes for the catalytic production of ROS through Fenton reaction. However, special tumor microenvironments (acidic pH) are required for CDT, hindering their therapeutic efficacy. CHIRALZYMES aims at developing original photoresponsive nanozymes as enhanced ROS-generators for cancer treatment, thanks to the synergistic combination of photocatalytic and enzyme-like activity. Moreover, a chiral surface modification of nanozymes is intended, to achieve higher specificity and efficiency. As a result, this challenging proposal will push the field of nanozymes beyond the current state-of-art, contributing to fill the application gap by exploring two promising strategies.