| Abstract: | Multimodal imaging-guided chemo-photothermal therapy is an excellent cancer treatment, which can not only efficiently against tumor, but also can offer precise treatment window and real-time monitoring of the treatment efficiency. In our work, polydopamine(PDA)-coated gold nanobones(AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes) were designed for this approach. The AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes have strong absorbance in the near infrared(NIR) region and higher photothermal conversion efficiency(75.48%) than gold nanobones alone, which was facilitated for photoacoustic imaging and photothermal therapy. Besides, the loading efficiency of doxorubicin(DOX) by AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes could be up to about 70 % and DOX release from AuNBs@PDA/DOX nanocomplexes sensitively response to the lower pH environment and NIR laser irradiation, which makes them become the excellent nano-carrier for the delivery of chemotherapy drug. In vitro and in vivo studies showed significant cytotoxicity and antitumor efficacy by the AuNBs@PDA/DOX nanoplatform with negligible side effects. Meanwhile, the nanoplatform was also successfully employed for computed tomography(CT) imaging, attributing to the high atomic number and high X-ray attenuation coefficient of gold. Therefore, we believed that the proposed PDA-coated gold nanobones would be a novel multifunctional theranostic nanoagent to realize the PA/CT imaging-guided chemo-photothermal therapy of cancer. |
