Precise clinical treatment of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an obstacle in clinic. Nanotechnology-assisted photothermal therapy (PTT) is a superior treatment modality for TNBC in terms of precision. However, thermoresistance arising from PTT and insufficient drug release from nanocarriers decrease the efficacy of PTT. AT13387 is a novel HSP90 inhibitor that can weaken thermoresistance and undergoing clinic II phase study, showing satisfactory antitumour activity through molecularly targeted therapy (MTT). Whereas, it has poor solubility. Hence hyaluronic acid and stearic acid were connected by hydrazone bonds and disulfide bonds, forming an amphipathic copolymer that could self-assembled into nanomicelles, followed by encapsulating Cypate and AT13387. These nanomicelles exhibited great features, including achieving mutually synergistic PTT/MTT for overcoming thermoresistance and promoting translocation of drugs, increasing the solubility of Cypate and AT13387, showing a pH/redox dual response that contributes to drug release, and having the ability of active targeting. Thus, the nanomicelles developed in this study may be a promising strategy for the precise treatment of TNBC.

Periodontitis is recognized as the major cause of tooth loss in adults, posing an adverse impact on systemic health. In periodontitis, excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) at the inflamed site culminates in periodontal destruction. In this study, a novel ROS-responsive drug delivery system based on polydopamine (PDA) functionalized mesoporous silica nanoparticles was developed for delivering minocycline hydrochloride (MH) to treat periodontitis. The outer PDA layer and the inner MH of the nanoparticles acted as ROS scavengers and anti-inflammatory agents, respectively. Under the synergistic action of PDA and MH, macrophages were polarized from the pro-inflammatory M1 to the anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype. The in vitro experiments provided convincing evidence that PDA could scavenge ROS effectively, and the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines was attenuated and the secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokines was enhanced through M1 to M2 polarization of macrophages with the cooperation of MH. In addition, the results obtained from the periodontitis rat models demonstrated that the synergetic effect of PDA and MH prevented alveolar bone loss without causing any adverse effect. Taken together, the results from the present investigation provide a new strategy to remodel the inflammatory microenvironment by inducing the polarization of macrophages from M1 toward M2 state for the treatment of periodontitis.