Colorectal cancer: a comprehensive review of carcinogenesis, diagnosis, and novel strategies for classified treatments.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common and the second deadliest cancer worldwide. To date, colorectal cancer becomes one of the most important challenges of the health system in many countries. Since the clinical symptoms of this cancer appear in the final stages of the disease and there is a significant golden time between the formation of polyps and the onset of cancer, early diagnosis can play a significant role in reducing mortality. Today, in addition to colonoscopy, minimally invasive methods such as liquid biopsy have received much attention. The treatment of this complex disease has been mostly based on traditional treatments including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy; the high mortality rate indicates a lack of success for current treatment methods. Moreover, disease recurrence is another problem of traditional treatments. Recently, new approaches such as targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and nanomedicine have opened new doors for cancer treatment, some of which have already entered the market, and many methods have shown promising results in clinical trials. The success of immunotherapy in the treatment of refractory disease, the introduction of these methods into neoadjuvant therapy, and the successful results in tumor shrinkage without surgery have made immunotherapy a tough competitor for conventional treatments. It seems that the combination of those methods with such targeted therapies will go through promising changes in the future of colorectal cancer treatment.

Investigating the effect of near infrared photo thermal therapy folic acid conjugated gold nano shell on melanoma cancer cell line A375.

Nowadays, there is growing interest regarding the use of metal Nanoshells as targeted agents of Nano-photo thermal cancer therapy. This study was aimed at synthesis the folic acid (FA)-conjugated with silica @gold core-shell nanoparticles (FA-SiO2@AuNPs) for improving the treatment of melanoma cancer cells. The characterization data showed that the FA-SiO2@AuNPs is spherical in shape and its size is ∼73.7 nm. The intracellular uptake of FA-SiO2@AuNPs into melanoma cells (A375) was measured through the inductively coupled plasma, (∼47.7%). The cytotoxicity of nanoparticles was investigated on A375 and HDF (Human dermal fibroblast) cell lines. Cytotoxicity results indicated that there is no significant cytotoxicity in HDF cell lines treated with nanoparticles. MTT and flow cytometry results showed that the viability of A375 cells treated by SiO2@Au and FA-SiO2@AuNPs was decreased significantly to about 31% and 16% respectively. The higher toxicity of cancer cells was obtained for the cells exposed to 808 nm near-infrared (NIR) laser after incubation with FA-SiO2@AuNPs rather than the non-targeted SiO2@AuNPs. Furthermore, about 64% more cell death was observed for A-375 cells using both photothermal therapy and treatment with FA-SiO2@AuNPs compared to photothermal therapy. Additionally, the majority of the cell deaths were related to the apoptosis process, not necrosis. It can be concluded that FA-SiO2@AuNPs was an effective targeting agent for photothermal therapy in the treatment of melanoma.