The emergence of nanocarriers solves the problems of
antitumor drugs such as non-targeting, huge side effects, etc., and has been widely used in
tumor therapy. Some kinds of
antitumor drugs such as
doxorubicin (DOX) mainly act on the
nucleic acid causing DNA damage, interfering with transcription, and thereby disrupting or blocking the process of
cancer cell replication. Herein, a new nanodrug delivery system, the
carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs)-
Pluronic F127-DOX (CPD), is designed by using CBNs as a nanocarrier for DOX. As a result, the
tumor growth inhibition rate of CPD group is as high as 79.42 ± 2.83%, and greatly reduces the side effects. The targeting rate of the CPD group of DOX in the
tumor nucleus is 36.78%, and the %ID/g in
tumor tissue is 30.09%. The CPD regulates the expression levels of
Caspase-3, p53, and Bcl-2 genes by increasing intracellular
reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and reducing mitochondrial membrane potential, which indicates that mitochondrial-mediated pathways are involved in apoptosis. The CPD nanodrug delivery system increases the effective accumulation of DOX in
tumor cell nuclei and
tumor tissues, and generates massive ROS, thereby inhibiting
tumor growth in vivo, representing a promising agent for anticancer applications.