Three birds with one stone: oxygen self-supply engineering palladium nanocluster/titanium carbide hybrid for single-NIR laser-triggered synergistic photodynamic-photothermal therapy.

As a key branch of the cross-discipline biophotonics, phototherapy, including photodynamic therapy (PDT), and photothermal therapy (PTT), is promising in biomedicine and visible light-driving PDT has been applied to clinical treatment. However, extensive applications of phototherapy are limited by the hypoxic microenvironment, laser penetration depth, and potential complexity for combined PDT/PTT. Thus, NIR-responsive oxygen self-supply nanocomposites functionalized with photosensitizers for achieving simultaneous in-depth PDT/PTT are urgently required. Herein, a multifunctional platform has been fabricated by co-immobilizing monodispersed ultrasmall Pd nanoclusters and a photosensitizer 5,10,15,20-Tetrakis (4-Aminophenyl)-21H,23H Porphyrin (Thp) on the surface of TiCT MXene nanosheets, generating the Pd-Thp-TiCT nanocomposite. Material characterization demonstrated that Pd nanoclusters and Thp were well-distributed on the MXene surface while MXene maintained its photothermal conversion efficiency and broad absorption. In this nanoplatform, irradiated by the single 808 nm laser, Pd selectively catalyzed the decomposition of HO to O, and O was continuously supplied to Thp for enhanced NIR-driving PDT. The fluorescence and photothermal imaging demonstrated the pronounced accumulation of nanocomposites in the tumor site. Both and results clearly demonstrated the nanocomposite had good biocompatibility, and that the synergistic PTT and enhanced PDT made apoptosis of the tumor cell achievable. This work not only proves this Pd-Thp-TiCT nanocomposite serves a promising solution for tumor hypoxia by inducing apoptosis of tumor cells with synergistic PTT and PDT, but also broadens the application of promising optical materials in biomedical field.