A Diradicaloid Small Molecular Nanotheranostic with Strong Near-Infrared Absorbance for Effective Cancer Photoacoustic Imaging and Photothermal Therapy

Xiaozhen Li, Di Zhang, Chao Yin, Guihong Lu*, Yingpeng Wan, Zhongming Huang, Jihua Tan, Shengliang Li*, Jingdong Luo*, Chun-Sing Lee*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Organic small molecule-based phototheranostics hold great promise for clinical translation by virtue of their distinct chemical structure, easy reproducibility, and high purity. However, reported molecular agents typically have relatively low optical absorbances, particularly over the near-infrared (NIR) region, and this limits their phototheranostic performance. Herein, we first exploit a diradicaloid molecular structure for enhancing NIR absorption to facilitate efficient photoacoustic imaging (PAI)-guided photothermal therapy (PTT). The donor-acceptor interaction in the diradicaloid molecule (DRM) leads to strong charge transfer resulting on obvious diradical characteristics, which is beneficial for NIR absorption. The DRM possesses excellent light-harvesting ability, with a mass extinction coefficient of ∼220 L g-1 cm-1, which is much higher than those (∼5-100 L g-1 cm-1) of typical organic molecules. After assembling into nanoparticles, they show good water dispersibility, good photostability, and impressive performance for PAI-guided PTT in vitro and in vivo. The impressive in vitro and in vivo performances show that developing small molecules with diradicaloid structures can be an effective approach for enhancing NIR harvesting capability for biomedical applications.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)15983-15991
JournalACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Volume13
Issue number14
Online published31 Mar 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Apr 2021

Research Keywords

  • diradical
  • near-infrared
  • photoacoustic imaging
  • photothermal therapy
  • small molecule

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