Photosensitizer Micelle With Near-Infrared Excitation For Cancer Phototherapy

Phototherapy is an attractive treatment modality for cancer therapy,which shows great advantages over the traditional treatments because of their high specificity,minimal invasiveness as well as negligible systemic toxicity.Nevertheless,the clinical photosensitizers have many drawbacks,sucha as:（1）weak absorption in the near-infrared（NIR）region;（2）poor biocompatibility;（3）limited tumor accumulation.Consequently,the development of the novel photosensitizers is urgently needed.Herein,aiming at the drawbacks of the photosensitizers mentioned above,two types of novel photosensitizers with near-infrared excitation were designed and synthesized.1.Iridium（Ⅲ） complex–derived polymeric micelles with NIR excitation for tumor therapy.Herein,biocompatible poly（ethylene glycol）（A）was introduced to the metal complexes（B）as hydrophilic blocks to form ABA-type triblock copolymer micelles.To achieve the NIR excitation,the upconversion nanoparticles are included in the polymeric micelles to permit NIR excitation.Besides,To improve the selectivity and specificity of tumor targeting,we covalently conjugated lapatinib（an inhibitor for human epithelial growth factor receptor 2） at the end of the block copolymer.Once upon NIR irradiation（980 nm）,this polymeric micelle system exhibits higher ¹O₂ generation efficiency and considerable cytotoxicity against HER-2-positive SKOV3cancer cells.Importantly,in vivo experiments demonstrated that the micelle system had excellent significant antitumor efficacy and negligible side effects.2.Novel photosensitizer for combined tumor photodynamic therapy,photothermal therapy and chemotherapy.Herein,a novel photosensitizer was designed and synthesized for combined photodynamic therapy,photothermal therapy and chemotherapy.In vitro cytotoxicity studies indicated that the newly synthesized photosensitizer displayed considerable cytotoxicity against the tested cancer cells.