Dual targeting hyaluronic acid - RGD mesoporous silica coated gold nanorods for chemo-photothermal cancer therapy

•A multifunctional nanoplatform (GNRs@mSiO2-HA-RGD) was constructed.•It had a good photothermal effect and excellent drug loading capacity.•It also had pH-enzyme sensitive and NIR-triggered drug release properties.•It may be a new promising dual-targeted delivery system for chemo-photothermal therapy.

This work reports a multifunctional nanoplatform (GNRs@mSiO2-HA-RGD) by conjugating targeting ligand hyaluronic acid (HA) and RGD with mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods (GNRs@mSiO2) for dual-targeted chemo-photothermal therapy. Doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) was used as the model drug to investigate the drug loading, in vitro drug release profiles and cell evaluation. The nanoplatform has demonstrated a good photothermal effect and excellent drug loading capacity of about 20.16%. It also had pH-enzyme sensitive and NIR-triggered drug release properties. Cellular uptake experiment results indicated that DOX-GNRs@mSiO2-HA-RGD can be dual-targeted to ovarian cancer cells via CD44 and integrin receptor mediated endocytosis pathway. Cytotoxicity experiments demonstrated that combined therapy exhibited a better therapy effect compared to that of single chemotherapy or photothermal therapy. Our study demonstrates that DOX-GNRs@mSiO2-HA-RGD may be a new promising dual-targeted delivery system for chemo-photothermal therapy.