Tumor phototherapies mainly including photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) have drawn more and more attention due to their various merits of minimal drug resistance, low invasiveness and good...

Supramolecular coordination complexes formed by coordination-induced assembly not only avoid the loss of activity of precursors but also provide an efficient way for controlled release, which can be further used in various fields of biology such as drug delivery, cell imaging, and tumor treatment. In this work, a PtII metallaclip (4) was prepared from 4-[4-(1,2,2-triphenylvinyl)­phenyl]­pyridine (1), 5,10,15-triphenyl-20-(pyridin-4-yl)­porphyrin (2), 90 o Pt, and glycol-chain-modified isophthalic acid (3) in an acetone/water mixture through the “coordination-driven self-assembly” method. 31P and 1H NMR spectroscopy and high-resolution mass spectrometry were used to characterize the obtained metallaclip 4. 4 can self-assemble into fluorescent nanostructures in aqueous solution because of the tetraphenylethylene unit and its amphiphilic nature. Importantly, the fluorescent nanoparticles not only can be employed for cell imaging but also can generate singlet oxygen (1O2) under 660 nm laser irradiation and the release of Pt drug in the tumor issue for cancer therapy. The work may provide a new way for scientists to construct functional biomaterials with multiple applications via molecular self-assembly.

Herein we synthesized an A−D−A small molecule photosensitizer DPTTIC and a new amphiphilic pillararene WP5-8C-2PEG, which were used to construct a novel nanoparticle DPTTIC NPs with NIR II absorption. under...

BODIPY photosensitizers have been integrated with a hypoxia‐activated prodrug to achieve synergistic photodynamic therapy (PDT) and chemotherapy. A novel BODIPY derivative BDP‐CN was designed and synthesized. It had two cyano groups to make it complex well with a water‐soluble pillar[5]arene. Their association constant was calculated to be (6.8±0.9)×106 M−1. After self‐assembly in water, regular spherical nanocarriers can be formed; these were used to encapsulate the hypoxia‐activated prodrug tirapazamine (TPZ). BDP‐CN displayed excellent photodynamic activity to complete PDT. In this process, O2 can be continuously consumed to activate TPZ to allow it to be converted to a benzotriazinyl (BTZ) radical with high cytotoxicity to complete chemotherapy. As a result, the formed nanoparticles showed excellent synergistic photodynamic therapy and chemotherapy efficacy. The synergistic therapy mechanism is discussed in detail.

No abstract