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Excipient-free porphyrin/SN-38 based nanotheranostics for drug delivery and cell imaging

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Abstract

Nanotheranostics with comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities show exciting cancer treatment potentials. Here, we develop an excipient-free drug delivery system for cancer diagnosis as well as therapy, in which a near infra-red photosensitizer and a chemotherapeutic drug can be self-delivered without any carriers. The building block of the drug delivery system was synthesized by covalently conjugating four anticancer drugs (7-ethyl-10-hydroxy-camptothecin, SN-38) with a photosensitizer (porphyrin) via hydrolyzable ester linkage, which endows the drug delivery system with 100% active pharmaceutical ingredients, excellent imaging, and therapeutic functionalities. The conjugates can readily self-assemble into nanosheets (PS NSs) and remain stable for at least 20 days in aqueous solution. In PS NSs, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) dominates the fluorescence of SN-38 and enables to monitor the drug release fluorescently. The PS NSs also show excellent anticancer activity in vitro, due to the increased cell uptake with the synergistic effect of photodynamic therapy and chemotherapy.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from Dr. Li’s faculty startup funds at UC Davis and Dr. Xue’s National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 81803002).

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Author notes

  1. Ye Yuan and Ruonan Bo contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Smart Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Ye Yuan & Lijie Dong

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California Davis, Sacramento, 95817, USA

    Ye Yuan, Ruonan Bo, Di Jing, Zhao Ma, Zhongling Wang, Xiangdong Xue & Yuanpei Li

  3. School of Veterinary Medicine, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225009, China

    Ruonan Bo

  4. Department of Oncology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, 410008, China

    Di Jing

  5. Department of Radiology, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200080, China

    Zhongling Wang

  6. Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of California Davis, Sacramento, 95817, USA

    Tzu-yin Lin

  7. College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710069, China

    Xiangdong Xue

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  1. Ye Yuan
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Correspondence to Xiangdong Xue or Yuanpei Li.

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Yuan, Y., Bo, R., Jing, D. et al. Excipient-free porphyrin/SN-38 based nanotheranostics for drug delivery and cell imaging. Nano Res. 13, 503–510 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2641-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2641-z

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