A semiconducting polymer nano-prodrug for hypoxia-activated synergetic photodynamic cancer therapy

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) holds great promise for cancer therapy; however, its efficacy is often compromised by tumor hypoxia. Herein, we report the synthesis of a semiconducting polymer nanoprodrug (SPNpd) that not only efficiently generates singlet oxygen (1O2) under NIR photoirradiation but also...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cui, Dong, Huang, Jiaguo, Zhen, Xu, Li, Jingchao, Jiang, Yuyan, Pu, Kanyi
Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/83296
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/50100
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Photodynamic therapy (PDT) holds great promise for cancer therapy; however, its efficacy is often compromised by tumor hypoxia. Herein, we report the synthesis of a semiconducting polymer nanoprodrug (SPNpd) that not only efficiently generates singlet oxygen (1O2) under NIR photoirradiation but also specifically activates its chemotherapeutic action in hypoxic tumor microenvironment. SPNpd is selfassembled from a amphiphilic polymer brush, which comprises a light-responsive photodynamic backbone grafted with poly(ethylene glycol) and conjugated with a chemodrug through hypoxia-cleavable linkers. The well-defined and compact nanostructure of SPNpd (30 nm) enables accumulation in the tumor of living mice. Owing to these features, SPNpd exerts synergistic photodynamic and chemo-therapy, and effectively inhibits tumor growth in a xenograft tumor mouse model. This study represents the first hypoxia-activatable phototherapeutic polymeric prodrug system with a high potential for cancer therapy.