Newly Designed Quasi-intrinsic Photosensitizers for Fluorescence Image-Guided Two-Photon Photodynamic Therapy with Type I/II Photoreactions

Abstract

In this work, a set of quasi-intrinsic photosensitizers are theoretically proposed based on the 2-amino-8-(1′-β-D-2′deoxyribofuranosyl)-imidazo[1,2-α]-1,3,5-triazin-4(8H)-one (P), which could pair with the 6-amino-5-nitro-3-(1′-β-D-2′-deoxyribofuranosyl)-2(1H)-pyridone (Z) and keep the essential structural characters of nucleic acid. It is revealed that the ring expansion and electron-donating/electron-withdrawing substitution bring enhanced two-photon absorption and bright photoluminescence of these monomers, thereby facilitating the selective excitation and tumor localization through fluorescence imaging. However, instead of undergoing radiative transition (S 1 → S 0 ), the base pairing induced fluorescence quenching and rapid intersystem crossing (S 1 → T n ) are observed and characterized by the reduced singlet− triplet energy gaps and large spin−orbit coupling values. To ensure the phototherapeutic properties of the considered base pairs in long-lived T 1 state, we examined the vertical electron affinity as well as vertical ionization potential for production of superoxide anions via Type I photoreaction, and their required T 1 energy (0.98 eV) to generate singlet oxygen 1 O 2 via Type II mechanism.