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Nanosilver-enhanced AIE photosensitizer for simultaneous bioimaging and photodynamic therapy

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Yen Nee Tan

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Abstract

© the Partner Organisations.Theranostic photosensitizers which enable both disease diagnosis and effective treatment have recently received much attention towards personalized medicine. Herein, we report a multifunctional nanohybrid system using silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to enhance the singlet oxygen generation (SOG) and fluorescence properties of a unique photosensitizer with aggregation-induced emission (AIE-PS) for simultaneous bioimaging and photodynamic therapy. To study the metal-enhancement effects, 4-mercaptobenzoic acid-capped AgNPs with well-controlled size (14, 40, and 80 nm) were synthesized to form nanohybrids with a specially designed red-emissive AIE-PS via simple electrostatic interactions. The careful control of the Ag nanoparticle concentration and the unique design of 80 nm AgNP@red-emissive AIE in this study resulted in a 10-fold enhancement in SOG, which is higher than other reported ME-SOG systems using similar plasmonic enhancers. Furthermore, the as-developed AgNP@AIE-PS nanohybrid exhibited improved photostability with negligible fluorescence quenching (5%), which is important for cell tracking. In addition, cytotoxity tests showed that these nanohybrids are biocompatibile with normal NIH-3T3 cells under dark conditions. Thus, they were employed for simultaneous imaging and photodynamic ablation of HeLa cancer cells. The results show that this brightly fluorescent AgNP@AIE-PS enabled about 4 times higher efficacy in PDT as compared to the control sample (i.e., 85% vs. 20% cell death) under low intensity white light irradiation (40 mW cm-2) for only 10 minutes, demonstrating its promising potential for advanced theranostic treatment in future nanomedicine. This journal is

Publication metadata

Author(s): Tavakkoli Yaraki M, Pan Y, Hu F, Yu Y, Liu B, Tan YN

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Materials Chemistry Frontiers

Year: 2020

Volume: 4

Issue: 10

Pages: 3074-3085

Online publication date: 10/08/2020

Acceptance date: 10/08/2020

ISSN (electronic): 2052-1537

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry

URL: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0QM00469C

DOI: 10.1039/d0qm00469c

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