Backgrounds
Photothermal therapy (PTT) inducing localized hyperthermia to kill cancer cells has attracted wide attention in cancer therapy. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during photothermal therapy (PTT) may cause irreversible damage to healthy tissues around the tumor. Simultaneously, hyperthermia can stimulate inflammatory response, thus promoting tumor recurrence and metastasis. How to reduce the undesired side effects remains to be an inevitable problem for the further development of photothermal therapy.
Results
The spherical mesoporous PBs with uniform size was prepared by an effective hydrothermal method. The yielded PBs exhibits good dispersion and stability in saline with an average hydrodynamic size of about 110 nm. The prepared PBs has a high photothermal conversion efficiency and photothermal stability. Meanwhile, PBs shows the intrinsic ROS scavenging properties (•OH, •OOH, and H2O2) in vitro. The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of PBs have also been evaluated in vivo. Moreover, the toxicity assessment and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-inducing ability show that PBs could not induce an inflammatory response. H&E-staining tissue of major organs show no significant damage, indicating that the good biocompatibility and safety of PBs in vivo. These intrinsic functions of PBs may achieve efficient PTT and simultaneously reduce the side effects induced by PTT.
Conclusion
The designed single-component PBs with intrinsic properties simultaneously drive their photothermal-antioxidant effect and photothermal-anti-inflammatory effect to overcome the problem of inflammatory response and heat stress-induced ROS during PTT. The discovery of the inherent function of PBs not only promotes the further clinical translation of PBs, but also promotes the further development of PTT.