Engineered Energy-Harvesting Hybrid Nanoscintillators for Enhanced Cancer Radiotherapy

During treatment, ionizing radiation interacts with biological tissues, generating high-energy charges that diffuse through the medium, damaging cellular DNA, or inducing the formation of cytotoxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) via water radiolysis. To enhance and localize ROS production by improving the interaction with ionizing radiation and optimizing the harvesting and utilization of deposited energy, we designed and developed a multicomponent nanomaterial as a prototype for the creation of coadjutant agents aimed at improving the efficacy and safety of radiotherapy. The system consists of a dense biocompatible magnesium silicate nanotube core, which enhances interaction with ionizing radiation, decorated with a dual layer of conjugated photosensitizers for singlet oxygen and ROS generation. Thanks to this optimized architecture that boosts the harvesting of the energy deposited by the ionizing radiation, exposure to X-rays resulted in a dramatic increase of almost 2 orders of magnitude in singlet oxygen generation yield compared to previously studied systems. This was accompanied by an excellent glioblastoma cell-killing efficiency at low concentrations, thus, strongly supporting the proposed nanomaterial architecture as a model for the development of next-generation radiotherapy coadjutants.