Thermo-Responsive Polymer Encapsulated Gold Nanorods for Single Continuous Wave Laser-Induced Photodynamic/ Photothermal Tumour Therapy
Abstract Gold nanoparticles have been proven suggested to be a versatile platform for a broad range of biomedical applications owing to their strong and tunable surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and good biocompatibility. In this study, a new nanoplatform composed of thermo-responsivepolymer encapsulated gold nanorods incorporating ICG was designed to couple the photothermal properties of gold nanorods (AuNRs) and the photodynamic properties of ICG for enhanced photodynamic/photothermal combination therapy (PDT/PTT). For the nanoplatform, in addition to significantly increasing theICG payload with the additional benefit of enhancing ICG photostability, the polymer shell also has thermo-responsive characteristics, which can control the release of drugs at tumour sites afterlaser irradiation. On the basis of these improvements, the nanoplatform strongly increased drug aggregation at the tumour site and improvedthe photothermal/photodynamic therapeutic efficacy by inhibiting the growth of tumours in mice aftermild laser irradiation. These results suggest that thisnanoplatform is a great potential system for tumour imaging and antitumour therapy.