The development of smart size-tunable drug delivery nanoplatform enables the solving of the paradox of inconsistent size-dependence of high tumor accumulation and deep penetration during its delivery process, thus achieving superior cancer treatment efficacy. Herein, we report a size-shrinkable nanomicelle complex system with an initial size of 101 nm enabling effective retention around the tumor periphery and could destruct to ultrasmall nanomicelles triggered by a near-infrared (NIR) laser to realize the deep tumor penetration. The nanomicelle system is consisted of an upper critical solution temperature (UCST)-type block copolymer poly(acrylamide-acrylonitrile)-polyethylene glycol-lipoic acid (p(AAm-co-AN)-g-PEG-LA) encapsulating gold nanorods. Upon the irradiation of the NIR laser at the tumor site, gold nanorods could convert the light energy to heat energy, realizing the photothermal ablation of superficial tumor tissue. Concurrently, the large micelles split into a cascade of ultrasmall micelles (∼7 nm), which could easily penetrate into the deep site of the tumor and achieve the in situ "on-demand" release of the loaded drug to exert superior combined photothermal-chemotherapy of cancer. By the precise manipulation of laser, the micelle complex system realized the hierarchical killing from the superficial-to-deep tumor and achieved almost complete tumor growth inhibition on the established xenograft liver tumor mice model.
Keywords: gold nanorods; near-infrared laser; photothermal-chemotherapy; size-shrinkable nanoparticles; smart drug delivery systems.