Oxygenic Enrichment in Hybrid Ruthenium Sulfide Nanoclusters for an Optimized Photothermal Effect

Abstract

Transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD)-based nanomaterials have been extensively explored for the photonic therapy. To the best of our knowledge, near-infrared (NIR) light is a requirement for the photothermal therapy (PTT) to achieve the feature of deep-tissue penetration, whereas no obvious absorption peaks existing in the NIR region for existing TMD nanomaterials limit their therapeutic efficacy. As one category of TMD nanomaterials, ruthenium sulfide-based nanomaterials have been less exploited in biomedical applications including tumor therapy so far. Here, we develop a facile biomineralization-assisted bottomup strategy to synthesize oxygenic hybrid ruthenium sulfide nanoclusters (RuS x NCs) by regulating the oxygen amounts and sulfur defects for the optimized PTT. By regulating the increasing initial molar ratios of Ru to S, RuS x NCs with small sizes were endowed with increasing oxygen contents and sulfur defects, leading to the photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE) increasing from 32.8 to 41.9%, which were higher than that of most small-sized inorganic photothermal nanoagents. In contrast to commercial indocyanine green, these RuS x NCs exhibited higher photostability under NIR laser irradiation. The high PCE and superior photostability allowed RuS x NCs to effectively and completely ablate cancer cells. Thus, the proposed defect engineering strategy endows RuS x NCs with an excellent photothermal effect for the PTT of tumors of living mice, which also proves the potential of further exploring the properties of RuS x NCs for future biomedical applications.

Germanium‐based monoelemental and binary two‐dimensional materials: Theoretical and experimental investigations and promising applications

“…The recent work of Lin and Shi 594 proved that 2D GeH‐PVP NSs (GeH NSs with surfaces modified by polyvinylpyrrolidone PVP]) exhibit excellent degradability and spectacular biocompatibility in comparison with other typical 2D biomaterials, as well as intriguing physiochemical features for phototriggered therapeutics and photoacoustic diagnostic imaging. Similarly, 2D GeP nanosheets were also shown to be biodegradable and could serve as NIR PTAs with a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 68.6%, which is much higher than those of graphene, MXenes, TMDs, and BP 595–599 …”

Flexible polymeric patch based nanotherapeutics against non-cancer therapy

“…Up to now, nanomaterials have been greatly employed as nanoagents for versatile nanomedical theranostics in light of inherent performances of different therapy modals [ 5 , 6 ]. Taking advantages of superior photothermal, electronic, optical, catalytic, magnetic, physical, and chemical features, these nanomaterials have been widely explored in various therapeutic modals, such as chemotherapy (CHT) [ 7 , 8 ], photothermal therapy (PTT) [ [9] , [10] , [11] ], photodynamic therapy (PDT) [ [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] ], chemodynamic therapy (CDT) [ [16] , [17] , [18] ], magnetothermal therapy [ 19 , 20 ], immunotherapy [ [21] , [22] , [23] ], radiotherapy (RT) [ 24 , 25 ], gene therapy [ 26 , 27 ] and starvation therapy (ST) [ 28 ]. However, non-cancer treatment has a number of disadvantages when used alone, including long-term accumulation, high toxicity, instability and low bioavailability, limiting their future clinic application.…”

Sulfur Defect-Engineered Biodegradable Cobalt Sulfide Quantum Dot-Driven Photothermal and Chemodynamic Anticancer Therapy

“…Therefore, we aim to directly increase the reaction rate of CDT at the tumor site with synergistic photothermal means. Due to the small but concentrated local heating of the tumor, we in essence can simultaneously spare the normal healthy tissues. − In order to ensure that the increased temperature is to be localized at the CDT site without any room for error, we sought to design a nanoplatform that has duality in increasing localized heat generation through rolling photothermal activation and dissipation and a Fenton agent into one single entity. PTT, which utilizes photothermal nanoagents to convert external near-infrared (NIR) light into heat, could not only collaborate with CDT for thermal-accelerated Fenton reaction by increasing the local temperature of a tumor but also further boost the cytotoxicity through thermal ablation of the same spot at the tumor.…”

“…Transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) quantum dots (QDs), such as cobalt sulfide (CoS x ), have attracted some attention because of several advantages including atomic-scale thickness, a direct band gap, and favorable electronic properties . The intrinsic existence of multivalency in Co coupled with a wide absorption range in a NIR window might present CoS x species as a potential candidate for our PTT/Fenton-related CDT therapeutic agents. − We have earlier defect-engineered at least seven other TMD QDs based on a biomineralization-assisted bottom-up strategy, in which some natural biopolymers such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) were used as the surfactant to render nanoparticles with a uniform size and excellent biocompatibility due to their template effect. ,− By controlling stoichiometric molar ratios at the synthesis stage, tunable sulfur vacancy density and oxygen and hydroxyl defects with more variable electronic trap states could be engineered into the TMD QDs. Herein, we defect-engineered defects to further regulate the CDT and PTT effects of CoS x QDs. ,, …”