Stereotactic Photodynamic Therapy Using a Two‐Photon AIE Photosensitizer

Abstract

Photodynamic therapy (PDT), a treatment involving lightactivated drugs (photosensitizers, PSs) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, has attracted much interest of biomedical researchers owing to its non-invasion. [1][2][3] In PDT, Two-photon photodynamic therapy (TP-PDT) is emerging as a powerful strategy for stereotactic targeting of diseased areas, but ideal photosensitizers (PSs) are currently lacking. This work reports a smart PS with aggregationinduced emission (AIE) feature, namely DPASP, for TP-PDT with excellent performances. DPASP exhibits high affinity to mitochondria, superior photostability, large two-photon absorption cross section as well as efficient reactive oxygen species generation, enabling it to achieve photosensitization both in vitro and in vivo under two-photon excitation. Moreover, its capability of stereotactic ablation of targeted cells with high-precision is also successfully demonstrated. All these merits make DPASP a promising TP-PDT candidate for accurate ablation of abnormal tissues with minimal damages to surrounding areas in the treatment of various diseases.

Aggregation-Induced Fluorogens in Bio-Detection, Tumor Imaging, and Therapy: A Review

“…The design strategies are further improved to fine-tune the emission to an NIR region 48,43 and enable two-photon imaging. 49,23 Because of low photon scattering and phototoxicity, negligible autofluorescence, 22,23,50 deep tissue penetration, the NIR and two-photon capable AIEgens enlightens the biomedical application effectively. 47,48,50,51 The NIR capable AIE molecules are constructed by improving the D-A-D effect by installing substituents with strong electron donors and acceptors to elevate the HOMO level and lower the LUMO level.…”

Materials with aggregation-induced emission characteristics for applications in diagnosis, theragnosis, disease mechanism study and personalized medicine

“…al recently reported the stereotactic PDT by employing two-photon PSs. 71 DPASP ( Figure 11A) was AIE-active with a red emission band peaked at 646 nm and a large Stokes shift of 189 nm, which was benefitical for alleviating self-absorption and enhancing signal-to-noise ratio.…”

Photoactivatable nanogenerators of reactive species for cancer therapy

“…The organic PSs harbor the special merits of good biocompatibility and biodegradability. Various organic nanomaterial-based PSs, such as porphyrin [ [71] , [72] , [73] , [74] , [75] ], boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) [ [76] , [77] , [78] ], cyanine dyes [ [79] , [80] , [81] , [82] ], aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecules [ [83] , [84] , [85] , [86] , [87] , [88] , [89] , [90] ], have attracted considerable attention.…”