Photoswitchable carbon-dot liposomes mediate catalytic cascade reactions for amplified dynamic treatment of tumor cells

An Overview of the Potential of Food-Based Carbon Dots for Biomedical Applications

“…Such photo-dynamic reactions prompt cancer cells to generate ROS, leading to the promotion of cancer cell death. This substantiates the potential of CD somes as promising photo-cycling nanozymes suitable for precise tumor phototherapy applications [151]. In summary, exploring the potential of food-based CDs in the above context represents a promising avenue for future development.…”

“…This method has been used to synthesize CDs from amino acids, proteins (i.e., casein and RNase A), and chitosan [132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141]. In other studies, researchers employed the hydrothermal method to enable the thermal carbon conversion of caffeic acid, fucoidan, and glycyrrhizic acid, resulting in the carbonization of CDs [142][143][144][145][146][147][148][149][150][151].…”

“…Depletion of GSH in programmed cells significantly downregulates glutathione peroxidase, leading to intracellular iron ions triggering the Fenton reaction, which generates lipid peroxides and initiates the production of reactive lipid peroxyl radicals, ultimately culminating in cell death [189]. In a recent study, CD somes synthesized from cooking oil were observed to possess high photocatalytic activity, including photocatalytic oxidase-and peroxidase-like functions when subjected to sequential UV (365 nm) and green light (530 nm) irradiation [151]. Such photo-dynamic reactions prompt cancer cells to generate ROS, leading to the promotion of cancer cell death.…”

Engineering of bespoke photosensitiser–microbe interfaces for enhanced semi-artificial photosynthesis

“…Due to the their ability to photoluminesce, these CDs have additionally been investigated for use in photocatalysis. 166 At 365 nm, CDsomes exhibit a fluorescent on-state, and at 530 nm a non-fluorescent off-state.…”

Enhanced sonodynamic therapy by carbon dots-shelled microbubbles with focused ultrasound

“…Our group previously engineered C-dots with hydrophobic carbon chains that could assemble into liposomes for use in tumor cell targeting and the generation of ROS for photodynamic therapy [25] , [26] . Here, we firstly investigated that if these C-dots liposomes could produce sufficient ROS for SDT after low-intensity US of several MHz, which has been widely applied in medical applications.…”