Hyaluronic Acid-IR780 Nanoparticles for Photothermal Ablation in Orthotopic Renal Cancer

Renal cancer is one of the most common malignancies in urological tumors; it is necessary to develop a noninvasive and highly targeted thermal ablation method for the treatment of renal tumors. IR780 has been shown to be an effective photothermal agent for tumor thermal ablation. This study was designed to explore the feasibility of applying hyaluronic acid-IR780 nanoparticles (HA-IR780 NPs) for targeted thermal ablation of renal tumors using an in situ renal tumor model. The size of the nanoparticles was 172±8.2 nm; it showed a stable spherical nanostructure with good monodispersity. HA-IR780 NPs showed high photothermal efficiency, with the 20 μg/mL HA-IR780 NPs showing a maximum temperature increase of 24.5°C with 6 min of 808 nm laser irradiation. NIR imaging showed that the nanoparticles exhibited targeted accumulation in renal tumor tissues. The treatment efficacy of the HA-IR780 NPs showed that renal tumors treated with the HA-IR780 NPs and laser irradiation were effectively ablated. Our results showed that the HA-IR780 nanoparticles that mediated the photothermal effect could generate tumor-specific heat for the destruction of a renal tumor in a minimally invasive way, which provides a novel strategy for thermal ablation of renal tumors.