An Electroluminodynamic Flexible Device for Highly Efficient Eradication of Drug‐Resistant Bacteria

Abstract

treatments. [2] Especially, compared with conventional chemotherapy, PDT acts its biocidal activity mainly through the oxidative damage of biological macromolecules such as phospholipids, enzymes, proteins, and DNA in pathological tissue/cells, and therefore is difficult to induce drug resistance. [3] The drastic emergence of antibiotic resistance has evolved into a worldwide health crisis, and PDT is considered as a promising technology to combat drugresistant bacteria. [4] Although it shows strong curative antibacterial effect, PDT usually needs to be driven by external physical light, which makes it available in special environment or assisted by bulky equipment. [5] Therefore, the development of more convenient, universal, and manipulatable driving PDT strategies is highly desired.Recently, several attempts have been made to use in situ self-luminescence, such as bioluminescence, electrochemiluminescence (ECL), and chemiluminescence (CL), as excitation light source for driving PDT. [6] For example, a bioluminescent luciferase conjugated quantum dot was prepared, which could emit light and excite commercial photosensitizer micelles (Foscan) while interacting with coelenterazine, and successfully generated ROS and killed ≈50% lung cancer cells. [7] In 2018, Wang et al. exploited an electric-driven device to emit ECL by electrochemical reaction of luminescent agent (luminol) and H 2 O 2 , which further excited their synthesized polythiophene photosensitizer to produce ROS, and achieved 67-79% sterilization of bacteria and yeast. [8] More recently, Fan and co-workers also prepared a penetration-independent nano-photosensitizer Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has attracted wide attention in antibacterial applications due to its advantages of spatial-temporal selectivity, noninvasiveness, and low incidence to develop drug resistance. To make it more convenient, universal, and manipulatable for clinical application, a conceptually antibacterial strategy, namely "electroluminodynamic therapy" (ELDT), is presented by nanoassembly of an electroluminescent (EL) material and a photosensitizer, which is capable of generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) in situ under an electric field, i.e., the fluorescence emitted by the EL molecules excites the photosensitizer to generate singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ), for the oxidative damage of pathogens. Based on the scheme of ELDT, a flexible therapeutic device is fabricated through a hydrogel loading with ELDT nanoagents, followed by integration with a flexible battery, satisfying the requirements of being light and wearable for wound dressings. The ELDT-based flexible device presents potent ROS-induced killing efficacies against drug-resistant bacteria (>99.9%), so as to effectively inhibit the superficial infection and promote the wound healing. This research reveals a proof-of-concept ELDT strategy as a prospective alternative to PDT, which avoids the utilization of a physical light source, and achieves convenient and effective killing of drug-resistant bacteria through a hydrogel-ba...

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Unveiling upsurge of photogenerated ROS: control of intersystem crossing through tuning aggregation patterns

“…Organic photosensitizers (PSs) could convert substrates (oxygen, water, etc.) 1,2 into reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon illumination, providing advantages in the photon-triggered therapeutic strategy [3][4][5] and photocatalysis. 6 During this process, a critical step is that electrons in the excited singlet state (S 1 ) will undergo a fast spin-ip, achieving an excited triplet state (T 1 ) through intersystem crossing (ISC).…”