Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Karwar 342030, India.
Interdisciplinary research platform, Smart Health Care, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Karwar 342030, India.
Biomater Sci. 2023 Dec 5;11(24):7759-7767. doi: 10.1039/d3bm01187a.
Light-mediated theranostic platforms involve the use of agents (small molecules/nanomaterials), which can absorb light to produce either heat or reactive chemical species (RCS) and emit fluorescence. Such platforms are advantageous in the field of personalized medicine, as they provide enhanced diagnostic capabilities, improved therapeutic efficiencies, and can also simultaneously monitor the treatment outcomes using imaging modalities. Specifically, agents absorbing near-infrared (NIR) light can provide minimal scattering, low autofluorescence, superior spatio-temporal resolution, and deeper tissue penetration depths. Gold nanorods (GNR) and indocyanine green (ICG) are two agents known to absorb light in the NIR region. GNR can provide tunable plasmonic properties, while ICG is an FDA-approved NIR fluorophore. However, the use of ICG and GNR suffers from various limitations, such as photobleaching, non-specificity, toxicity, and aggregation in solution. To overcome these limitations, herein, we report on NIR light-activatable niosomes loaded with GNR and ICG for cancer theranostic applications. Both agents were encapsulated into non-ionic surfactant-based biocompatible niosomes to form ICG-GNR@Nio with superior loading efficiencies and enhanced properties. ICG-GNR@Nio offers excellent storage stability, photostability, elevated temperature rise and generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon 1064 nm laser irradiation. Subsequently, the enhanced phototherapeutic capabilities mediated by ICG-GNR@Nio were validated in the cellular experiments. Overall, ICG-GNR@Nio-based theranostic platforms can provide a significant benchmark in the improved diagnosis and therapeutic capabilities for biomedical clinicians to tackle various diseases.
光疗诊断平台涉及使用能够吸收光产生热量或活性化学物质（RCS）并发射荧光的试剂（小分子/纳米材料）。此类平台在个性化医疗领域具有优势，因为它们提供了增强的诊断能力、提高的治疗效率，并且还可以使用成像模式同时监测治疗结果。具体而言，吸收近红外（NIR）光的试剂可以提供最小的散射、低自发荧光、优越的时空分辨率和更深的组织穿透深度。金纳米棒（GNR）和吲哚菁绿（ICG）是两种已知在 NIR 区域吸收光的试剂。GNR 可以提供可调谐的等离子体特性，而 ICG 是 FDA 批准的 NIR 荧光团。然而，ICG 和 GNR 的使用存在各种限制，例如光漂白、非特异性、毒性和在溶液中的聚集。为了克服这些限制，我们在此报告了用于癌症治疗应用的 NIR 光激活的载有 GNR 和 ICG 的尼奥斯omes。两种试剂都被封装在基于非离子表面活性剂的生物相容性尼奥斯omes 中，形成具有优异负载效率和增强性能的 ICG-GNR@Nio。ICG-GNR@Nio 具有出色的储存稳定性、光稳定性、在 1064nm 激光照射下升高的温度和活性氧物种（ROS）的产生。随后，在细胞实验中验证了 ICG-GNR@Nio 介导的增强光疗能力。总体而言，基于 ICG-GNR@Nio 的治疗诊断平台可以为生物医学临床医生提供显著的基准，以提高诊断和治疗各种疾病的能力。
