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Because of the high expression of glutathione (GSH) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cancer cells, nanoparticles formed by various redox-responsive linkers have been widely developed. However, ...

The introduction of multiple components into one crystalline metal–organic framework (MOF) provides a feasible approach to fully understand the correlation of component heterogeneity and the whole performance. Herein, photoactive tetratopic chlorin (TCPC) ligands with different geometry and connectivity have been successfully incorporated into the Hf-UiO-66 archetype structure without altering the underlying topology by a facile strategy. Unlike previous porphyrin-nanoscale-MOFs (porphyrin-NMOFs) with homogeneous periodical porphyrin arrangements typically for photodynamic therapy (PDT) usage, we demonstrate that TCPC component heterogeneity within as-synthesized TCPC-UiO possesses both PDT and photothermal therapy (PTT) simultaneously, but PTT takes a more potent antitumor efficacy as proven in several photophysical characterizations and biological experiments in vitro. The high photothermal conversion efficiency, favorable photostability and biocompatibility, and strong X-ray attenuating ability of the ...

The limitation for the biomedical application of porous organic polymers (POPs) is the big size and poor dispersibility in aqueous media. Herein, a nanoscale metal–organic framework (MOF)@POP composite, named UNM, has been synthesized by epitaxial growth of the photoactive porphyrin-POPs (H2P-POP) on the outer surface of amine containing UiO-66 (UiO-AM). After the growth of POPs, the crystallization, pore structure, and size distribution of UNM are retained well. The formed UNM possesses a small size of less than 200 nm and could be internalized by cancer cells. Such light-activated UNM exhibits efficient ability to generate 1O2 under various experimental conditions, which can be further applied for PDT efficacy. The present work demonstrates the great potential of nanoscale porous polymers in biomedical fields and cancer treatment.

Smart responsive nanomaterials, which are sensitive to biological signals, are promising therapeutic formulations. It has been well studied that redox potential is much different at both tissue and cellular level. In this work, three organic nanoparticles with variable redox sensitivity were fabricated, and their redox sensitivity was evaluated and compared in detail. First, diselenide, disulfide, and carbon–carbon bond containing porphyrin dimers TPP-SeSe/TPP-SS/TPP-CC were synthesized. Then, the corresponding self-assembled nanoparticles (TPP-SeSe/TPP-SS/TPP-CC NPs) were prepared via nanoprecipitation method. As-synthesized nanoparticles were utilized to systematically compare the stimuli responsiveness to reductive agents (e.g., glutathione) in different conditions, especially in the living cells, through the singlet oxygen generation ability and the cytotoxicity. A series of experimental results demonstrated that the diselenide bond shows better superiority in reduction sensitivity than that of the di...

Fluorescent bioprobes have been regarded as promising tools for bioimaging in recent years due to their excellent properties. However, the aggregation-caused quenching of emissions is a big limitation in practice for this strategy. Organic dyes with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature can effectively solve this problem. Herein, stable fluorescent nanoparticles were prepared by supramolecular assembling of carbon dots (CDs) and hydrophobic AIEgen. The formulated CDsG-AIE 1 exhibits superior physical and photo stability than AIE self-assembling nanoparticles in various physiology conditions. On the other hand, the formulated CDsG-AIE 1 also showed advanced features such as large Stokes shift, good biocompatibility, high emission efficiency, and strong photobleaching resistance. More importantly, the CDsG-AIE 1 can be readily internalized by HeLa cells, and strong red fluorescence from the nanoparticles can still be clearly observed after six generations over 15 days. In addition, the CDsG-AIE 1 also ...

The diselenide-containing fluorescent molecules (SeBDP) and antitumor drug paclitaxel (SePTX) were synthesized and used for constructing SeBDP nanoparticles (SeBDP NPs) and SePTX NPs in aqueous solution through nanoprecipitation method. Both SeBDP NPs and SePTX NPs exhibit high stability and excellent reduction-sensitivity. More interestingly, SeBDP and SePTX could coassemble into uniform and spherical nanoparticles (co-NPs) with dual functions of fluorescence imaging and antitumor activity. These organic NPs could be internalized by different cells as revealed by confocal laser microscopy. Importantly, the co-NPs exhibited selectivity of cytotoxicities between cancerous and normal cells. The cellular proliferation inhibition toward tumor cells (including HeLa and MCF-7 cells) was obviously higher than that toward normal cells (BEAS-2B and L929 cells), which might be attributed to the increasing reactive oxygen species in cancer cells treated by diselenide-containing NPs. These results highlight the poten...