Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a clinically approved, minimally invasive therapeutic technique that can induce the regression of targeted lesions via generating excess cytotoxic reactive oxygen species. However, due to the limited penetration depth of visible excitation light and the intrinsic hypoxia microenvironment of solid tumors, the efficacy of PDT in the treatment of cancer, especially deep-seated or large tumors, is unsatisfactory. Herein, we developed an efficient in vivo PDT system based on a nanomaterial, dihydrolipoic acid coated gold nanocluster (AuNC@DHLA), that combined the advantages of large penetration depth in tissue, extremely high two-photon (TP) absorption cross section (σ 2 ∼ 10 6 GM), efficient ROS generation, a type I photochemical mechanism, and negligible in vivo toxicity. With AuNC@DHLA as the photosensitizer, highly efficient in vivo TP-PDT has been achieved.
Conjugated
polymer nanoparticles (CPNs) based on a common solar
cell material (PTB7) have been prepared, and their potential in theranostic
applications based on bioimaging and photosensitizing capabilities
has been evaluated. The main absorption and emission bands of the
prepared CPNs both fell within the NIR-I (650–950 nm) transparency
window, allowing facile and efficient implementation of our CPNs as
bioimaging agents, as demonstrated in this work for A549 human lung
cancer cell cultures. The prepared CPN samples were also shown to
produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon photoexcitation in the
near-infrared or ultraviolet spectral regions, both in aqueous solutions
and in HaCaT keratinocyte cell cultures. Importantly, we show that
the photosensitizing ability of our CPNs was largely determined by
the nature of the stabilizing shell: coating the CPNs with a Pluronic
F-127 copolymer led to an improvement of photoinitiated ROS production,
while using poly[styrene-co-maleic anhydride] instead
completely quenched said process. This work therefore demonstrates
that the photosensitizing capability of CPNs can be modulated via an appropriate selection of stabilizing material and
highlights the significance of this parameter for the on-demand design
of theranostic probes based on CPNs.
A concise and facile sol-gel method to prepare multiple magnetic SiO/Fe O hollow porous spheres was developed. A series of SiO/Fe O hollow porous spheres consisting of single shell, yolk-shell, double shells, and triple shells could be obtained by simply adjusting the formaldehyde amount, as Fe(acac) was used as the shell-forming promoter. As the formaldehyde amount increases, the morphology of the as-prepared hollow spheres changed from single-shelled, yolk-shelled, double-shelled, to triple-shelled and then turned back. The spheres possess a large specific surface area (∼966 m/g), uniform mesopores (∼4.5 nm), and large pore volume (1.37 cm/g). Moreover, the yolk-shelled spheres have been successfully used in in situ adsorbing and reducing heavy metal ions in aqueous solution; the results suggested that it was an efficient adsorbent and convenient to concentrate from water.
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