Facile Fabrication of Nanoscale Porphyrinic Covalent Organic Polymers for Combined Photodynamic and Photothermal Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancers is usually inefficient due to the relatively low level of oxygen in cancer cells; therefore, it needs to combine with other treatment strategies such as chemotherapy or photothermal therapy (PTT) to achieve the best anticancer efficacy. Although porphyrin-containing materials have been widely studied for PDT, the photothermal effect is rarely reported. Herein, nanoscale porphyrin-containing covalent organic polymers (PCOPs) were produced via a room temperature solution-based aging method. The resulting nanoparticles possess high photothermal conversion efficiency (21.7%) and excellent photodynamic effect. For the first time, the in vitro and in vivo tests indicated an enhanced antitumor efficacy for PCOP with combined PDT and PTT. This study provides an efficient approach to fabricate nanoCOP and also demonstrates the great potential of porphyrin-containing COP for biomedical applications.

In vivo oral insulin delivery via covalent organic frameworks

“…29,30 Nanoparticles offer better storage and physiological stability compared to other nanosized colloidal carriers such as liposomes and emulsions, 27 with nanoscale imine-linked covalent organic frameworks (nCOFs) 31 in particular having shown tremendous potential as emerging nanomedicine candidates for drug delivery. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] nCOFs feature a long-range ordered structure in which the organic building blocks are spatially controlled in two or three dimensions leading to regular pores with diameters facilitating the loading and controlled release of large drugs and proteins/enzymes (Table S1 †). 39,42,43 In addition, their high exibility in molecular architecture and functional design make them versatile and therefore give them unique responsivity to their environment.…”

3D Covalent Organic Frameworks Based on Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons for Reversible Oxygen Capture

“…[ 5 ] To overcome these issues, 1 O 2 delivery systems based on nanocarriers, such as gold nanorods, [ 7 ] supramolecular polymers, [ 8 ] metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), [ 9 ] and covalent organic polymers (COPs), [ 10,11 ] have been developed in recent years. In particular, some porphyrin‐based MOFs or COPs [ 12 ] were used as photosensitizers for photodynamic cancer therapy owing to their larger molecular size and extensive π‐conjugated systems. However, the potential toxicity of the incorporation of metals in MOFs and the structural disorder of COPs limit their further applications.…”

Conjugated microporous polymers for near-infrared photothermal control of shape change

“…Therefore, increasing attention has been focused on the development of organic photothermal materials, especially conjugated polymers [28][29][30][31]. Besides the common polyaniline [32] and polypyrrole [33], some conjugated polymers have emerged as novel photothermal materials [34]. For example, Cao et al [35] synthesized a narrowbandgap conjugated polymer containing thiophene and bithiophene which could absorb NIR-II light (1000-1700 nm) that can penetrate tissue deeper than NIR-I light, and convert it into thermal energy.…”