Light-triggered plasmonic vesicles with enhanced catalytic activity of glucose oxidase for programmable photothermal/starvation therapy

• Published in: Science China materials Vol. 64; no. 5; pp. 1291 - 1301
• Main Authors: Deng, Zhuoting, He, Yaling, Younis, Muhammad Rizwan, Lei, Shan, Jiang, Chao, Yuan, Yanyan, Huang, Peng, Lin, Jing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Science China Press 01.05.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anticancer properties; Catalytic activity; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Glucose oxidase; Hyperthermia; Infrared lasers; Materials Science; Optical properties; Plasmonics; Self-assembly; Side effects; Therapy; Vesicles; light-triggered release; starvation therapy; glucose oxidase; photothermal therapy; plasmonic vesicles
• ISSN: 2095-8226; 2199-4501
• DOI: 10.1007/s40843-020-1502-0

Glucose oxidase (GOx)-based nanotheranostic agents hold great promise in tumor starvation and its synergistic therapy. Self-assembled plasmonic gold vesicles (GVs) with unique optical properties, large hollow cavity, and strong localized surface plasmon resonance, can be used as multi-functional nanocarriers for synergistic therapy. Herein, GOx-loaded GVs (GV-GOx) were developed for light-triggered GOx release as well as enhanced catalytic activity of GOx, achieving programmable photothermal/starvation therapy. Under near-infrared laser irradiation, the GV-GOx generated strong localized hyperthermia due to plasmon coupling effect of GVs, promoting the release of encapsulated GOx and increasing its catalytic activity, resulting in enhanced tumor starvation effect. In addition, the high photothermal effect improved the cellular uptake of GV-GOx and allowed an efficient monitoring of synergistic tumor treatment via photoacoustic/photothermal duplex imaging in vivo. Impressively, the synergistic photothermal/starvation therapy demonstrated complete tumor eradication in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice, verifying superior synergistic anti-tumor therapeutic effects than monotherapy with no apparent systemic side effects. Our work demonstrated the development of a light-triggered nanoplatform for cancer synergistic therapy.