| Institution: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240 P. R. China;2. Department of Ophthalmology, Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200240 P. R. China
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Orbital Disease and Ocular Oncology, Shanghai, 200000 P. R. China;3. Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072 Australia;4. Department of Ophthalmology, Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200240 P. R. China |
| Abstract: | The convenience of injectable hydrogels that can provide high loading of diverse phototherapy agents and further long-time retention at the tumor site has attracted tremendous interest in simultaneous photothermal and photodynamic cancer therapies. However, to incorporate the phototherapy agents into hydrogels, complex modifications are generally unavoidable. Moreover, these phototherapy agents usually suffer from low efficiency and work at different irradiation wavelengths outside the near infrared windows. Hence, a method for the fabrication of an injectable hydrogel for simultaneous photothermal therapy and photodynamic therapy, through the Schiff-base reaction between amido modified carbon dots (NCDs) and aldehyde modified cellulose nanocrystals is proposed. The NCDs act as both phototherapy agents and crosslinkers to form hydrogels. Significantly, the NCDs demonstrate an extremely high photothermal conversion efficiency of 77.6% which is among the highest levels for photothermal agents and a high singlet quantum yield of 0.37 under a single 660 nm light-emitting diode irradiation. The hydrogels are examined through in vitro and in vivo animal experiments which show nontoxic and effectively tumor inhibition. Thus, the strategy of direct reaction of phototherapy agents and the matrix not only provides new strategies for injectable hydrogel fabrication but paves a new road for advanced tumor treatment. |
