Innovative
therapies are urgently needed to combat cancer. Thermal
ablation of tumor cells is a promising minimally invasive treatment
option. Infrared light can penetrate human tissues and reach superficial
malignancies. MXenes are a class of 2D materials that consist of carbides/nitrides
of transition metals. The transverse surface plasmons of MXenes allow
for efficient light absorption and light-to-heat conversion, making
MXenes promising agents for photothermal therapy (PTT). To date, near-infrared
(NIR) light lasers have been used in PTT studies explicitly in a continuous
mode. We hypothesized that pulsed NIR lasers have certain advantages
for the development of tailored PTT treatment targeting tumor cells.
The pulsed lasers offer a wide range of controllable parameters, such
as power density, duration of pulses, pulse frequency, and so on.
Consequently, they can lower the total energy applied and enable the
ablation of tumor cells while sparing adjacent healthy tissues. We
show for the first time that a pulsed 1064 nm laser could be employed
for selective ablation of cells loaded with Ti3C2T
x
MXene. We demonstrate both low toxicity
and good biocompatibility of this MXene in vitro,
as well as a favorable safety profile based on the experiments in vivo. Furthermore, we analyze the interaction of MXene
with cells in several cell lines and discuss possible artifacts of
commonly used cellular metabolic assays in experiments with MXenes.
Overall, these studies provide a basis for the development of efficient
and safe protocols for minimally invasive therapies for certain tumors.
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