Precisely Tuning Photothermal and Photodynamic Effects of Polymeric Nanoparticles by Controlled Copolymerization

Abstract

Cancer possesses normoxic and hypoxia microenvironments with different levels of oxygen, needing different efficacies of photothermal and photodynamic therapies. It is important to precisely tune the photothermal and photodynamic effects of phototherapy nano‐agents for efficient cancer treatment. Now, a series of copolymeric nanoparticles (PPy‐Te NPs) were synthesized in situ by controlled oxidative copolymerization with different ratios of pyrrole to tellurophene by FeCl3. The photothermal and photodynamic effects of semiconducting nano‐agents under the first near‐infrared (NIR) irradiation were precisely and systematically tuned upon simply varying the molar ratio of the pyrrole to tellurophene. The PPy‐Te NPs were used for cancer treatment in mice, exhibiting excellent biocompatibility and therapeutic effect. This work presents a simple method to tune photothermal and photodynamic therapies effect in semiconducting nano‐agents for cancer treatment.

Recent near-infrared light-activated nanomedicine toward precision cancer therapy

“…184 In addition to the aforementioned examples, other interesting in/organic nanomaterials that can serve as PTAs are also worth studying. [185][186][187][188] Some commonly adopted PTAs and their corresponding performance are listed in Table 1.…”

Polymer-Based Nanomaterials for Noninvasive Cancer Photothermal Therapy

“…(e) Schematic illustration of the coprecipitation of PPy-Te nanocomposites for photothermal and photodynamic effects of tumor. Reproduced with permission from ref . Copyright 2020 John Wiley and Sons.…”

“…Fine-tuning the photothermal and photodynamic effects of phototherapeutic nanomaterials is important for effective cancer treatment. This work developed a new strategy of precisely tuning semiconducting copolymeric nanoparticles to tune the PTT and PDT therapeutic efficiency in the tumor treatments …”

“…This work developed a new strategy of precisely tuning semiconducting copolymeric nanoparticles to tune the PTT and PDT therapeutic efficiency in the tumor treatments. 92 PPy and its nanocomposites have been widely used in tumor PTT. Through the modification of the PPy nanoparticles and PPy-based nanocomposites, researchers can endow those nanoparticles with multiple applications, including MRI/PAI/ PTT/CT/PDT/chemotherapy, etc.…”

Mitochondria-Targeted Nanomedicine for Enhanced Efficacy of Cancer Therapy

“…polypeptides ( Fang et al, 2020 ; Kang et al, 2020 ), proteins, antibodies ( Chen et al, 2012 ; Pan et al, 2021 ), folic acids ( Mitra et al, 2018 ) and aptamers ( Tang et al, 2020 ; Tian et al, 2021 )). On this basis, the unique advantages of nanocarriers have been widely demonstrated including long-term sustained ( Xia et al, 2019 ) and controlled release ( Xia et al, 2014 ) and the integration with more diagnostic or therapeutic modality such as multimodal imaging ( Gao et al, 2017 ; Xia et al, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2019 ), photodynamic therapy (PDT) ( Lucky et al, 2015 ; Wen et al, 2020 ), photothermal therapy (PTT) ( Xia et al, 2016 ; Yang et al, 2017 ) and immunotherapy ( Meraz et al, 2012 ; Secret et al, 2013 ). However, the major limitation of nanomedicine lies in the insufficient anticancer therapeutic efficacy, thus there is an urgent demand to further improve their therapy efficacy.…”