Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Ultrasound Diagnosis and Treatment, Department of Medical Ultrasound, Shanghai Tenth People's Hospital, Ultrasound Research and Education Institute, Tongji University Cancer Center, Tongji University School of Medicine, 301 Yan-chang-zhong Road, Shanghai 200072, P. R. China.
State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructures, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, P. R. China.
J Mater Chem B. 2020 Jun 24;8(24):5257-5266. doi: 10.1039/d0tb00519c.
Localized tumor photothermal cancer ablation is a minimally invasive therapeutic modality for combating cancer, but it often suffers from low therapeutic efficacy and poor precision due to the poor accumulation and non-uniform distribution of used photothermal-conversion agents in tumor tissue via the typical intravenous administration. To address this, an injectable and phase-changeable composite bio-injection consisting of biocompatible two-dimensional (2D) niobium carbide (Nb2C) MXene and the plant-originating protein, zein, has been engineered for near infrared (NIR)-II-triggered tumor photothermal ablation. Zein can respond to aqueous microenvironments and also external photo-triggers from the NIR-II bio-window (1064 nm), and transforms into a solid bio-implant after solvent exchange between ethanol and water. Which, thus, traps Nb2C MXene and heat, improving ablation efficiency and enabling the precise and complete eradication of 4T1 breast tumor cells without additional safety concerns. More significantly, shear wave elastography (SWE) as a deep-penetration imaging mode that can reflect the ablated outcomes via monitoring tissue density variation, has been employed to guide the photo-thermal ablation process to further improve the ablation precision. Thus, this compatible and phase-changeable bio-injection capable of improving photo-thermal ablation efficiency holds great potential in clinical applications.
局部肿瘤光热癌症消融是一种对抗癌症的微创治疗方式，但由于通过典型的静脉内给药，用于光热转换剂在肿瘤组织中的积累不良和分布不均匀，其治疗效果往往较差，精度也较差。为了解决这个问题，已经设计了一种可注射和相变型的复合生物注射剂，由生物相容性的二维（2D）碳化铌（Nb2C）MXene 和源自植物的蛋白质玉米醇溶蛋白组成，用于近红外（NIR）-II 触发的肿瘤光热消融。玉米醇溶蛋白可以响应水微环境，也可以响应来自 NIR-II 生物窗口（1064nm）的外部光触发，并且在乙醇和水之间的溶剂交换后转化为固体生物植入物。这就捕获了 Nb2C MXene 和热量，提高了消融效率，并能够精确且完全消除 4T1 乳腺癌细胞，而没有额外的安全问题。更重要的是，剪切波弹性成像（SWE）作为一种可以通过监测组织密度变化来反映消融结果的深穿透成像模式，已经被用于指导光热消融过程，以进一步提高消融精度。因此，这种兼容且相变型的生物注射剂能够提高光热消融效率，在临床应用中具有很大的潜力。
