Objective (s): SN38 is the prominent and effective anticancer drug for treating various types of human cancers such as colorectal, ovarian and lung cancers. SN38 is highly toxic, and due to its poor solubility in aqueous media, and low stability and hydrolysis at physiological pH, it has not been used as an anti-cancer drug. To overcome these problems, SN38 was conjugated with new nanocarriers ...

A novel thermosensitive polymer p(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-poly[ethylene glycol] methyl ether acrylate)-block-poly(epsilon-caprolactone), p(NIPAAM-co-PEGMEA)-b-PCL, was synthesized and developed as nanomicelles. The hydrophobic heat shock protein 90 inhibitor 17-allylamino-17-demethoxygeldanamycin and the photosensitizer cyanine dye infrared-780 were loaded into the core of the micelles to achi...

Phototherapies such as photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT), due to their specific spatiotemporal selectivity and minimal invasiveness, have been widely investigated as alternative treatments of malignant diseases. Graphene and its derivatives not only have been used as carriers to deliver photosensitizers for PDT, but also as photothermal conversion agents (PTCAs) for PTT....

A core–shell heterostructure consisting of plasmonic gold nanorods and porphyrinic metal–organic frameworks is synthesized as a promising platform to combine photodynamic therapy photothermal for enhanced tumor treatment.

Background: Nowadays, it is needed to explore new routes to treat infectious bacterial pathogens due to prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial photothermal therapy (PTT), as a new strategy, eradicates pathogenic bacteria.Objective: In this study, the antimicrobial effects of a carbon nanoparticles-polypyrrole nanocomposite (C-PPy) upon laser irradiation were investigat...

The development of new and improved photothermal contrast agents for the successful treatment of cancer (or other diseases) via plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) is a crucial part of the application of nanotechnology in medicine. Gold nanorods (AuNRs) have been found to be the most effective photothermal contrast agents, both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, determining the optimum AuNR siz...

Optimizing contrast enhancement is essential for producing specific signals in biomedical imaging and therapy. The potential of using Aucore-Agshell nanorods (Au@Ag NRs) as a dual-functional theranostic contrast agent is demonstrated for effective cancer imaging and treatments. Due to its strong NIR absorption and high efficiency of photothermal conversion, effects of both photoacoustic tomogra...

The coupling of diagnostic capability and effective therapy in a single multifunctional nanomedicine is desirable but remains challenging. Here, we developed multifunctional nanoparticles consisting of a gold nanostar (AuNS) core with a shell of metal-drug coordination polymer (CP). The AuNS core enabled plasmonic photothermal effect and two-photon photoluminescence (TPL), while the CP shell of...

Combination of photothermal and photodynamic therapy (PTT/PDT) offer unique advantages over PDT alone. However, to achieve synergetic PDT/PTT effect, one generally needs two lasers with different wavelengths. Near-infrared dye IR-780 could be used as photosensitizer both for PTT and PDT, but its lipophilicity limits its practical use and in vivo efficiency. Herein, a simple multifunctional IR78...

Near-infrared surface-enhanced Raman scattering (NIR SERS) imaging is now a promising molecular imaging technology due to its narrow spectral bandwidth, low background interference and deep imaging depth. In this work, we report a novel strategy for fabrication of NIR SERS nanoprobes without using any expensive and highly toxic organic dyes. Multifunctional conducting polymer (CP) materials, se...