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Donor strategy for promoting nonradiative decay to achieve an efficient photothermal therapy for treating cancer

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Abstract

Photothermal therapy (PTT) is emerging as an effective treatment for superficial carcinoma. A key challenge to the effectiveness of PTT is to develop photosensitizers with high photothermal conversion efficiency. Aiming to address this challenge, we develop a series of multi-arylpyrrole derivatives with different donors that contain different multi-rotor structures to explore highly efficient PTT photosensitizers. Among these multi-arylpyrrole derivatives, MAP4-FE nanoparticles with a small size of their donor groups and better-donating ability exhibit a high photothermal conversion efficiency (up to 72%) when they are encapsulated by an amphiphilic polymer. As a result, the MAP4-FE nanoparticles have shown satisfactory PTT effects on in vivo tumor eradication under the guidance of photoacoustic signals. The findings of this study provide significant insights for the development of high-efficiency PTT photosensitizers for cancer treatment by making full use of the nonradiative decay of small size donors as rotors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21875019, 21803007, 21975020, 51803009), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0901800), the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (2019ZT08Y191), and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JSGG20200225151916021).

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Construction Tailorable Advanced Functional Materials and Green Applications, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Fei Ren, Jianbing Shi, Bin Tong, Zhengxu Cai & Yuping Dong

  2. Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Zeshun Li, Kai Li, Chen Zhang, Heng Guo & Lei Xi

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials, Key Laboratory of Cluster Science of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Xiaoyan Zheng

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  1. Fei Ren
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  2. Zeshun Li
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  3. Kai Li
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  4. Xiaoyan Zheng
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  5. Jianbing Shi
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  8. Bin Tong
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Correspondence to Kai Li, Xiaoyan Zheng, Jianbing Shi or Yuping Dong.

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Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Ren, F., Li, Z., Li, K. et al. Donor strategy for promoting nonradiative decay to achieve an efficient photothermal therapy for treating cancer. Sci. China Chem. 64, 1530–1539 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-021-1055-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-021-1055-0

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