The huge interest in exfoliated black phosphorus (phosphorene), an innovative 2D material made up only of phosphorus atoms, arises from the need to exploit its outstanding electronic and optoelectronic properties, but has recently found a wide application in biomedical areas especially for its surprising and unexpected anticancer and regenerative properties.
The PHOSMED (Exfoliated black phosphorus for biomedical applications) ERC PoC project proposes the use of exfoliated black phosphorus for the potential treatment of prostate cancer via a non-invasive and non-radioactive therapy free from significant side-effects. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men with approximately 1.4 million cases worldwide and 375,000 deaths in 2020. Rising mortality makes prostate cancer a major public health concern. The many existing therapeutic approaches (prostatectomy, hormonal therapy and radioactive treatment) are not exempted from side effects and impose huge costs of managing the disease on the health service.
The PHOSMED multidisciplinary team, combining advanced expertise in the areas of 2D material chemistry and bioengineering, has recently demonstrated that exfoliated black phosphorus (SMART BP) is able not only to induce in vitro cell death of prostate cancer cells but also to support the growth of healthy cells. With PHOSMED we therefore set ourselves the goal of taking a step forward by validating in vivo the effect of phosphorene on an animal model and to explore the commercial potential of this innovative therapeutic agent.
In vivo tests conducted on groups of immunocompromised mice fully confirmed in vitro tests demonstrating that, at very low doses, SMART BP has beneficial effects comparable to those of a chemotherapy drug widely used in prostatic cancer treatment, without having its toxicity and adverse effects on healthy tissues, ensuring comparably much higher survival rates and thus achieving the primary objective of the project.
It is this dual behavior of SMART BP, therapeutic and at the same time regenerative, which appears astonishing because this new material, without any associated treatment (radioactive or photothermal) and with a non-invasive method, can inhibit the progression of cancer while preserving the normal control of the surrounding prostate tissue.
The solution we propose goes largely beyond the state of the art, promoting a local treatment of prostate cancer based on a non-radioactive, non-toxic, biocompatible 2D material, easily administered and easily removed by renal clearance and even with a selective action on cells healthy and cancerous. Furthermore, the preparation of SMART BP use a proprietary and economical technology and has all the requisites to meet the needs of both end users (patients) and customers (doctors, healthcare organizations) thus demonstrating a significant socio-economic impact.
Although further and costly studies are needed to bring the SMART BP technology to the level necessary for its commercialization and further steps are equally necessary for its therapeutic and clinical validation on humans, different models of economic exploitation of this potentially breakthrough medical device have already been identified and a sound business plan has been developed to secure the project to acquiring the funding necessary for its completion.
