Issue 16, 2023

Ligand engineering of Au44 nanoclusters for NIR-II luminescent and photoacoustic imaging-guided cancer photothermal therapy

Abstract

Developing a high-performance noninvasive probe for precise cancer theranostics is very challenging but urgently required. Herein, a novel Au nanoclusters (NCs)-based probe was designed for cancer theranostics via ligand engineering by conjugating photoluminescent (PL) Au44 NCs in the second near-infrared window (NIR-II, 1000–1700 nm) with aromatic photoacoustic (PA)/photothermal molecules through click chemistry. This design bypasses the incompatibility dilemma between photoluminescence (PL) attributes and PA/photothermal properties because the rigidity of the PA/photothermal molecules can lead to aggregation-induced emission (AIE) of the Au(I)-ligand shell of the Au NCs by constraining their nonradiative relaxation. Benefiting from strong NIR-II PL with emissions at 1080 and 1240 nm, high photothermal conversion efficiency (65.12%), low cytotoxicity, appropriate renal clearance, and enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, the as-designed Au NC-based theranostic probe achieves ultradeep NIR-II PL/PA imaging-guided cancer photothermal therapy (PTT). Remarkably, 16 days after photothermal treatment guided by NIR-II PL/PA imaging, mice were all healed without tumor recurrence, while the average life span of the mice in the control groups was only 17–21 days. This study is interesting because it provides a paradigm for designing a metal NC-based theranostics probe, and it may add fundamentally and methodologically to noninvasive imaging-guided disease therapy.

Graphical abstract: Ligand engineering of Au44 nanoclusters for NIR-II luminescent and photoacoustic imaging-guided cancer photothermal therapy

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
15 Oct 2022
Accepted
14 Feb 2023
First published
08 Mar 2023
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2023,14, 4308-4318

Ligand engineering of Au44 nanoclusters for NIR-II luminescent and photoacoustic imaging-guided cancer photothermal therapy

G. Yang, X. Mu, X. Pan, Y. Tang, Q. Yao, Y. Wang, F. Jiang, F. Du, J. Xie, X. Zhou and X. Yuan, Chem. Sci., 2023, 14, 4308 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC05729H

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