Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an effective strategy for
cancer
treatment, which offers advantages such as rapid effectiveness, low
toxicity, and minimal trauma. However, one of the key components of
PDT, photosensitizers, typically requires excitation by ultraviolet
or visible light to function, which limits the application of this
therapy to some extent. To address the above issues, in this research,
a composite material UCNPs@SiO2–ZnPc-Fe(OH)3 (USZ-Fe(OH)3) was prepared for photochemo-dynamic
therapy (PCDT) based on rare earth upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs).
To enhance the upconversion fluorescence intensity, a layer of inert
shell was coated on the original nanoparticles, resulting in core–shell–shell-structured
UCNPs of NaYF4:Yb,Er@NaYF4:Nd@NaYF4. A layer of SiO2 was coated on the above UCNPs in order
to improve their biocompatibility, followed by loading the photosensitizer
ZnPc to prepare UCNPs@SiO2–ZnPc (USZ) for PCDT of
oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Finally, Fe(OH)3 was
loaded on the surface of USZ through electrostatic adsorption to obtain
USZ-Fe(OH)3, with the aim of improving the hypoxic environment
in solid tumors and achieving the effectiveness of PCDT. In vitro
and in vivo experiments demonstrated the composite material USZ-Fe(OH)3 exhibited excellent therapeutic effects in PCDT for OSCC.
Moreover, a deep learning model of the ResNet18 network was used to
detect the pathology of the tumor area from mice treated with PCDT
and those from the control group. All of the results indicate the
proposed PCDT platform in this work presented excellent performance
in tumor treatment.