Recently, nanomaterials with multiple functions, such as drug carrier, MRI and optical imaging, photothermal therapy etc, have become more and more popular in the domain of cancer research. In this study, a C60-IONP nanocomposite is synthesized via decorating iron oxide nanoparticles (IONP) onto fullerene (C60) and then functionalized by polyethylene glycol (PEG2000), giving C60-IONP-PEG with excellent stability in physiological solutions, finally folic acid (FA), a widely used tumor targeting molecule, was linked to C60-IONP-PEG in order to obtain an active tumor targeting effect to MCF-7 cells and malignant tumor in mice models. Herein, a hybrid nanoplatform with multi-functional characteristics for cancer diagnosis, photodynamic therapy (PDT), radiofrequency (RF) thermal therapy (RTT) and magnetic targeting applications was developed and explored its biofunctions in vitro and in vivo. C60-IONP-PEG-FA showed neglectable toxicity, not only served as a powerful tumor diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent, but also as a strong photosensitizer and powerful agent for photothermal ablation of tumor, furthermore a remarkable synergistic enhancement of PDT combination with RTT was also observed during the treatment both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, the multi-functional nanoplatform also could selectively kill cancer cells in highly localized regions via the excellent active tumor targeting and magnetic targeted abilities. This work showed the multi-functional C60-IONP-PEG-FA nanoplatform had a great potential for cancer theranostic applications.
Keywords: Magnetic targeting; Multifunction; Theranostic nanoplatform; Tumor targeting.
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