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Nano Research 2023, 16(4): 5216-5225 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5127-3
Research Article | Issue | Published: 23 November 2022

A peroxidase-like single-atom Fe-N5 active site for effective killing human lung adenocarcinoma cells

Show Author's Information Liye Zhu1,  Hong Zhong2,  Dan Du2,  Tao Li4,5,  Hoai Nguyen6,  Scott P. Beckman2,  Wentao Xu1,  Jin-Cheng Li3( ),  Nan Cheng1( ),  Yuehe Lin2( )
Beijing Laboratory for Food Quality and Safety, College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Energy Saving in Phosphorus Chemical Engineering and New Phosphorus Materials, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, China
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, 1425 W. Lincoln Hwy., DeKalb, IL 60115, USA
X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Material Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Keywords:
single-atom catalyst, cancer therapy, peroxidase-like catalytic activity, three-dimensional (3D), cancer cell model
Topics:
Nano biologySynthesis
Cite this article:
Zhu L, Zhong H, Du D, et al. A peroxidase-like single-atom Fe-N5 active site for effective killing human lung adenocarcinoma cells. Nano Research, 2023, 16(4): 5216-5225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5127-3
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Single-atom catalyst (SAC) is one of the newest catalysts, and attracts people’s wide attention in cancer therapy based on their characteristics of maximum specific catalytic activity and high stability. We designed and synthesized a Fe-N decorated graphene nanosheet (Fe-N5/GN SAC) with the coordination number of five. Through enzymology and theoretical calculations, the Fe-N5/GN SAC has outstanding intrinsic peroxidase-like catalytic activity due to single-atom Fe site with five-N-coordination structure. We explored its potential on lung cancer therapy, and found that it could kill human lung adenocarcinoma cells (A549) by decomposing hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) under acidic microenvironment in three-dimensional (3D) lung cancer cell model. Our study demonstrates a promising application of SAC with highly efficient single-atom catalytic sites for cancer treatment.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

A peroxidase-like single-atom Fe-N5 active site for effective killing human lung adenocarcinoma cells

Show Author's information Liye Zhu1, Hong Zhong2, Dan Du2, Tao Li4,5, Hoai Nguyen6, Scott P. Beckman2, Wentao Xu1, Jin-Cheng Li3( ), Nan Cheng1( ), Yuehe Lin2( )
Beijing Laboratory for Food Quality and Safety, College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Energy Saving in Phosphorus Chemical Engineering and New Phosphorus Materials, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, China
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, 1425 W. Lincoln Hwy., DeKalb, IL 60115, USA
X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Material Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA

Abstract

Single-atom catalyst (SAC) is one of the newest catalysts, and attracts people’s wide attention in cancer therapy based on their characteristics of maximum specific catalytic activity and high stability. We designed and synthesized a Fe-N decorated graphene nanosheet (Fe-N5/GN SAC) with the coordination number of five. Through enzymology and theoretical calculations, the Fe-N5/GN SAC has outstanding intrinsic peroxidase-like catalytic activity due to single-atom Fe site with five-N-coordination structure. We explored its potential on lung cancer therapy, and found that it could kill human lung adenocarcinoma cells (A549) by decomposing hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) under acidic microenvironment in three-dimensional (3D) lung cancer cell model. Our study demonstrates a promising application of SAC with highly efficient single-atom catalytic sites for cancer treatment.

Keywords: single-atom catalyst, cancer therapy, peroxidase-like catalytic activity, three-dimensional (3D), cancer cell model

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 11 August 2022
Revised: 28 September 2022
Accepted: 30 September 2022
Published: 23 November 2022
Issue date: April 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

N. C. would like to acknowledge the support the 2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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