Department of Laboratory Medicine, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China.
The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710048, China.
Adv Mater. 2023 Nov;35(47):e2306616. doi: 10.1002/adma.202306616. Epub 2023 Oct 10.
High-efficiency absorptivity is crucial for the construction of high-performance luminescent materials, especially the long-wavelength near-infrared II (NIR-II) materials; thus seeking an efficient and universal strategy to elevate the absorptivity is extremely important but is still an intractable challenge. In this work, a simple but efficient design strategy is discovered, involving the introduction of gold(I) unit that could effectively elevate the absorptivity of aggregation-induced-emission luminogens (AIEgens). As a result of the efficient elevation of absorptivity, the representative AIE-active TBTP-Au shows more superior NIR-II (1220 nm) luminescence, much higher photothermal conversion efficiency, and unique intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generating ability compared with that of the TBTP ligand. Taking advantage of these improvements, the fabricated tumor-targeting TBTP-Au-cRGD nanoparticles achieve specific NIR-II tumorous imaging in vivo and exert high-efficiency cancer therapy via the synergistic chemotherapy and photothermal therapy. Thus, this work provides a new and efficient strategy to construct high-absorption luminescent materials and demonstrates the great potential of gold(I)-based AIEgens as multifunctional theranostic agents.
高效的吸收率对于构建高性能发光材料至关重要，特别是长波长近红外二区（NIR-II）材料；因此，寻求一种高效且通用的策略来提高吸收率非常重要，但这仍然是一个棘手的挑战。在这项工作中，发现了一种简单但有效的设计策略，涉及引入金（I）单元，该单元可以有效地提高聚集诱导发光（AIE）生色团的吸收率。由于吸收率的有效提高，代表性的 AIE 活性 TBTP-Au 表现出更优越的近红外二区（1220nm）发光、更高的光热转换效率以及独特的细胞内活性氧（ROS）生成能力，与 TBTP 配体相比。利用这些改进，制备的肿瘤靶向 TBTP-Au-cRGD 纳米粒子实现了体内特异性的近红外二区肿瘤成像，并通过协同化学治疗和光热治疗发挥了高效的癌症治疗作用。因此，这项工作提供了一种构建高吸收发光材料的新方法和有效策略，并展示了基于金（I）的 AIE 生色团作为多功能治疗剂的巨大潜力。
