Design of superior phototheranostic agents guided by Jablonski diagrams

Phototheranostics represents a promising direction for modern precision medicine, which has recently attracted great research interest from multidisciplinary research areas. Organic optical agents including small molecular fluorophores, semiconducting/conjugated polymers, aggregation-induced emissio...

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Published inChemical Society reviews Vol. 49; no. 22; pp. 8179 - 8234
Main Authors Feng, Guangxue, Zhang, Guo-Qiang, Ding, Dan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Royal Society of Chemistry 21.11.2020
Subjects
Animals
Biocompatibility
biosafety
Chemical compounds
crossing
Deactivation
design
deterioration
Drug Design
energy
Energy dissipation
Excitation
Fluorescence
fluorescent dyes
Humans
Molecular Structure
Multidisciplinary research
Nanoengineering
nanotechnology
Neoplasms - drug therapy
Neoplasms - metabolism
Phosphorescence
Photoacoustic Techniques
photons
Photosensitizing Agents - chemical synthesis
Photosensitizing Agents - chemistry
Photosensitizing Agents - therapeutic use
polymers
precision medicine
semiconductors
society
Theranostic Nanomedicine
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Summary:Phototheranostics represents a promising direction for modern precision medicine, which has recently attracted great research interest from multidisciplinary research areas. Organic optical agents including small molecular fluorophores, semiconducting/conjugated polymers, aggregation-induced emission luminogens, etc. with tuneable photophysical properties, high biosafety and biocompatibility, facile processability and ease of functionalization have delivered encouraging performance in disease phototheranostics. This review summarizes the recent progress of organic phototheranostic agents with an emphasis on the main strategies to manipulate the three excitation energy dissipation pathways, namely, radiative decay, thermal deactivation, and intersystem crossing, with the assistance of a Jablonski diagram, which particularly showcases how the Jablonski diagram has been guiding the design of organic agents from molecule to aggregate levels to promote the disease phototheranostic outcomes. Molecular design and nanoengineering strategies to modulate photophysical processes of organic optical agents to convert the absorbed photons into fluorescent/phosphorescent/photoacoustic signals and/or photodynamic/photothermal curing effects for improved disease phototheranostics are elaborated. Noteworthily, adaptive phototheranostics with activatable and transformable functions on demand, and regulation of excitation such as chemiexcitation to promote the phototheranostic efficacies are also included. A brief summary with the discussion of current challenges and future perspectives in this research field is further presented. This review summarizes how Jablonski diagrams guide the design of advanced organic optical agents and improvement of disease phototheranostic efficacies.
Bibliography:Guangxue Feng received his PhD degree from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore in 2016, followed by a postdoctoral study at the same university. After serving as the Chief Research Scientist in a start-up company LuminiCell Pte Ltd for two years, he joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering at South China University of Technology as a Professor in 2019. His research focuses on the development of semiconducting organic optical agents for phototheranostics.
Guo-Qiang Zhang received his PhD degree from the College of Pharmacy in Nankai University in 2018. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. Dan Ding in the State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology in Nankai University. His current research focuses on the design and synthesis of smart/functional molecular imaging probes and exploration of their biomedical applications.
Dan Ding received his PhD degree from the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering in Nanjing University in 2010. After a postdoctoral training in the National University of Singapore, he joined Nankai University, where he is currently a Professor in State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, and College of Life Science. He also conducted his work in The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as a visiting scholar. His current research focuses on the design and synthesis of smart/functional molecular imaging probes and exploration of their biomedical applications.
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ISSN:0306-0012
1460-4744
1460-4744
DOI:10.1039/d0cs00671h