Reactive oxygen species-mediated tumor chemodynamic therapy and photodynamic therapy have captured extensive attention in practical cancer combination therapies. However, the severe treatment conditions and the hypoxic microenvironment of solid tumors significantly limit the efficacy of these therapies. This work demonstrates the design and fabrication of a multifunctional persistent luminescence nanoplatform (PHFI, refers to PLNP-HSA-Fe3+-IR780) for cancer multimodal imaging and effective photoenhanced combination therapy. The near-infrared-emitted persistent luminescence nanoparticles (PLNP) was modified with human serum albumin (HSA) combined with an IR780 probe and Fe3+. The synthesized PHFI possesses high longitudinal relaxivity, obvious photoacoustic contrast signals, and long-lasting persistent luminescence, indicating that PHFI can be used for cancer magnetic resonance imaging, photoacoustic imaging, and persistent luminescence multimodal imaging. PHFI shows intrinsic photoenhanced Fenton-like catalytic activities as well as photodynamic and photothermal effects and thereby can effectively overcome severe treatment conditions for killing tumor cells. It is worth noting that PHFI serving as a rechargeable internal light source for photoenhanced combination therapy was first disclosed. We believe that our work shows the great potential of PHFI for cancer theranostics and will advance the development of PLNP-based nanoplatforms in tumor catalytic therapy.
Keywords: Fenton-like catalytic activity; combination therapy; multimodal imaging; persistent luminescence nanoparticles; reactive oxygen species.