Synthesis Of Near-Infrared Fluorophores With Aggregate-Induced Emission Properties And Their Applications In Optical Diagnosis And Treatment

Phototheranostics represents a promising direction for modern precision medicine,which is recently under intensive interest for cancer research.The ingenious integration of all phototheranostic modalities in a single molecule with precise spatial colocalization,including fluorescence imaging(FLI),photoacoustic imaging(PAI),photothermal imaging(PTI),photodynamic therapy(PDT)and photothermal therapy(PTT)is a tremendously challenging task,which mainly result from the difficulty of molecular design and the complexity of energy-dissipation.Reports on a single molecular one-for-all theranostic agent are still very rare.Herein,we designed two novel aggregation-induced emission(AIE)-active fluorogens(AIEgens,named DPMD and TPMD)with a cross-shaped donor-acceptor structure via a facile synthetic method and constructed the versatile nanoparticles(NPs)by encapsulating AIEgen with amphiphilic polymer.In this system,we chose TPMD as an example of balanced energy dissipation for the development of multifunctional phototherapeutics.The TPMD NPs simultaneously possess adequate near-infrared fluorescence emission at 821 nm for FLI,effective reactive oxygen species generation for PDT,and outstanding photothermal effect.It is worth noting that the TPMD nanoparticles ?F and thermal conversion efficiency reached 19% and 42% respectively.Experimental results in cells and mice demonstrate the superior potential of AIE NPs in multimodal image-guided synergistic PDT/PTT cancer therapy.Therefore,this study provides a new material for the development of multifunctional optical diagnostic reagents for cancer treatment.