Institute of Smart Biomaterials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang, China.
Zhejiang-Mauritius Joint Research Center for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang, China.
J Mater Chem B. 2022 Jun 29;10(25):4889-4896. doi: 10.1039/d2tb00775d.
Photothermal therapy is a promising tumor ablation technique that converts light into heat energy to kill cancer cells. Prussian blue (PB), a biocompatible photothermal reagent, has been widely explored for cancer treatment. However, the translational potential of PB is severely hampered by its low photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE) and poor stability. To tackle these issues, we adopted the biomineralization modality where PB was integrated with calcium phosphate (CaP) through the binding between calcium ions and PB. The mineralized PB (CaP&PB) demonstrated significantly improved PCE (40.2%), resulting from a calcium-induced bandgap-narrowing effect, and exhibited superior suspension stability. Using a 4T1 orthotopic breast cancer BALB/c mouse model, we observed that mineralized PB showed a significant temperature increase within the tumor, which led to better tumoricidal activity compared with CaP and PB when identical NIR treatment was applied. These achievements demonstrated the success of introducing calcium phosphate into Prussian blue by biomineralization to improve the PCE and stability of photothermal reagents, suggesting an alternative translational strategy for enhanced cancer photothermal therapy.
光热疗法是一种有前途的肿瘤消融技术，它将光能转化为热能来杀死癌细胞。普鲁士蓝（PB）是一种生物相容性的光热试剂，已被广泛探索用于癌症治疗。然而，PB 的转化潜力受到其低光热转换效率（PCE）和较差的稳定性的严重阻碍。为了解决这些问题，我们采用了生物矿化的方式，通过钙离子与 PB 之间的结合将 PB 与磷酸钙（CaP）整合在一起。矿化的 PB（CaP&PB）表现出显著提高的 PCE（40.2%），这归因于钙诱导的带隙变窄效应，并且表现出优异的悬浮稳定性。使用 4T1 原位乳腺癌 BALB/c 小鼠模型，我们观察到矿化 PB 在肿瘤内引起了显著的温度升高，与相同的近红外治疗相比，当应用相同的近红外治疗时，CaP 和 PB 表现出更好的杀肿瘤活性。这些成就表明通过生物矿化将磷酸钙引入普鲁士蓝中以提高光热试剂的 PCE 和稳定性是成功的，为增强癌症光热治疗提供了一种替代的转化策略。
