Highly discriminating photorelease of anticancer drugs based on hypoxia activatable phototrigger conjugated chitosan nanoparticles.

An ultimately selective photorelease system of chitosan-nanoparticles is constructed. Only under unique aspects of tumor-hypoxia physiological conditions, the preliminary locked phototrigger is unlocked by biological reduction to enable the release of the caged drug either by visible light or two-photon near-IR (NIR) excitation. This approach provides a highly discriminating photorelease of anticancer drug to hypoxic tumor cells, but not to healthy normal cells.