Multimodal collaborative therapy has been recognized
as one of
the more effective means to eliminate tumors in the current biomedicine
research field as compared with monotherapy. Among them, by taking
advantage of its high-precision and controllability, phototherapy
has become a mainstay of treatment. However, physical encapsulation
of free photosensitive units within nanocarriers was one of the main
implementations, which might inevitably result in the photosensitizer
leakage and side effect. For this purpose, a kind of multifunctional
integrated polyprodrug amphiphiles, P(PFO-IG-CPT)-PEG, were prepared
by reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer polymerization
from polymerizable pentadecafluorooctan monomers, indocyanine green
monomers, reduction-responsive camptothecin monomers, and acid-responsive
PEG based methacrylate monomers (GMA(-OH/-PEG)). The resultant copolymers
could self-assemble into spherical nanoparticles in water, performing
size-deformability in acidic conditions and subsequent disintegration
in reduction environment as demonstrated by in vitro experiments.
Furthermore, an enhanced CPT release ratio and rate from nanoparticles
could be achieved by a NIR irradiation due to the hyperthermia induced
by the covalently linked IG moieties. Not only that, because of the
sufficient O2 content brought by PFO, the NIR light-triggered
generation of 1O2 was also detected in cells.
With the combination of CPT-guided chemotherapy as well as NIR light-guided
photo-thermal and photodynamic therapies, fatal and irreversible damage
to cancer cells was observed by cell experiments; the implanted tumor
size in the mouse model was obviously shrunk upon receiving multimodal
collaborative therapy. We speculate that such fabricated nanodiagnosis
and treatment systems could meet the growing emergency for effective
drug delivery, programmed and on-demand drug release, and multimodal
integrated therapy.