No abstract

The oxygen concentration dependence of sonodynamic therapy (SDT) and bioreductive therapy can be utilized to design the strategy of synergistic therapy. Herein, holmium-doped hollow silica nanospheres are synthesized and then sequentially modified with chlorin e6, carboxyl poly(ethylene glycol) silane, and prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) monoclonal antibody. The resultant nanocomposite designated as HHSN-C/P-mAb has good biocompatibility and can specifically target cancer cells overexpressing PSCA. Due to the inner cavity structure and Ho doping, HHSN-C/P-mAb shows high ultrasound (US) imaging contrast capability and excellent high-field magnetic resonance contrast performance. HHSN-C/P-mAb can act as a nanocarrier for loading the bioreductive prodrug tirapazamine (TPZ), and the degradation of the hollow nanospheres under the trigger of acidic microenvironment favors the pH responsive release of TPZ from the material. Upon US irradiation, HHSN-C/P-mAb produces reactive oxygen species to kill the cancer cells, and importantly, the oxygen consumption during SDT induces an intratumoral hypoxic environment to activate the therapeutic function of codelivered TPZ, resulting in a high-effective synergistic therapy. The findings of this study highlight that HHSN-C/P-mAb is a versatile theranostic nanoplatform for efficient cancer treatment.

Multifunctional nano-biomaterials with the integration of diagnostic and therapeutic functions have shown great promise in improving the efficacy of cancer therapy. Herein, a new nanoplatform based on functionalized CuBiS nanoparticles (NPs) is fabricated for tumour-targeted combination phototherapy. The as-synthesized hydrophobic CuBiS NPs are modified with DSPE-PEG/DSPE-PEG-NH, followed by the conjugation of the photosensitizer chlorin e6 (Ce6) and the target ligand folic acid (FA). The introduced Ce6 can further form a chelate complex with Gd. The rationally designed CuBiS-PEG-(Ce6-Gd)-FA NPs, which have high physiological stability and good biocompatibility, can specifically target FA-receptor over-expressed tumour cells. The CuBiS-PEG-(Ce6-Gd)-FA NPs exhibit effective dual-modal CT and MR imaging in the xenografted HeLa tumours. Importantly, excellent in vivo anti-tumour effects have been achieved by synergistic photothermal/photodynamic therapy using the multifunctional NPs. We expect that this versatile nanoplatform will play a role in exploring precise cancer diagnosis and therapy.

GO/Bi2Se3/PVP nanocomposites fabricated by a one-pot solvothermal method show good performance in CT/photoacoustic imaging and photothermal therapy.