Yang Dong,1,2,* Liang Guo,3,* Lu Song,1 Tingting Liu,1 Gang Zheng,2 Meizhu Zheng,2 Baojiang Li1 

1Department of Breast Surgery, Breast Cancer Center, The Affiliated Taian City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, Taian, Shandong, 271000, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Breast Surgery, Shandong Cancer Hospital and Institute, Shandong First Medical University and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, 250117, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Baojiang Li, Department of Breast Surgery, Breast Cancer Center, The Affiliated Taian City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, Taian, Shandong, 271000, People’s Republic of China, Email libaojiang28@sina.com Meizhu Zheng, Department of Breast Surgery, Shandong Cancer Hospital and Institute, Shandong First Medical University and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, 250117, People’s Republic of China, Email zheng_0624@163.com

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a high early recurrence rate and poor prognosis. Given its insensitivity to traditional systemic chemotherapy, there is an urgent need for new therapeutic strategies for effective treatment. This paper reports the development of a novel two-dimensional MXene composite nanoplatform for efficient synergistic chemotherapy and photothermal therapy of TNBC.
Results: To achieve surface functionalization of MXene, we developed a surface nanopore engineering strategy, enabling the uniform coating of a thin mesoporous silica layer on the two-dimensional Ti3C2 MXene surface. This strategy endows MXenes with well-defined mesopores for on-demand drug release/delivery and enhanced hydrophilicity/dispersibility. Systematic in vitro and in vivo evaluations demonstrate that Ti3C2@MSNs have high active targeting capability upon entering tumors, and through the synergistic chemotherapy of the mesoporous shell and the photothermal therapy of the Ti3C2 MXene core, tumors can be completely eradicated with no significant recurrence.
Conclusion: This study provides a new strategy for developing MXene-based composite nano drug delivery systems to effectively combat TNBC.

Keywords: photothermal therapy, chemotherapy, Ti3C2 MXene, mesoporous silica, synergistic therapy