Rational design of an "all-in-one" phototheranostic

Zi-Shu Yang; Yuhang Yao; Adam C Sedgwick; Cuicui Li; Ye Xia; Yan Wang; Lei Kang; Hongmei Su; Bing-Wu Wang; Song Gao; Jonathan L Sessler; Jun-Long Zhang

doi:10.1039/d0sc03368e

Rational design of an "all-in-one" phototheranostic

Chem Sci. 2020 Jul 21;11(31):8204-8213. doi: 10.1039/d0sc03368e.

Authors

Zi-Shu Yang¹, Yuhang Yao¹, Adam C Sedgwick², Cuicui Li³, Ye Xia⁴, Yan Wang¹, Lei Kang³, Hongmei Su⁴, Bing-Wu Wang¹, Song Gao^{1

5}, Jonathan L Sessler², Jun-Long Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University Beijing 100871 P. R. China zhangjunlong@pku.edu.cn.
² Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin 105 East 24th Street-A5300 Austin TX 78712-1224 USA sessler@cm.utexas.edu.
³ Department of Nuclear Medicine, Peking University First Hospital Beijing 100034 P. R. China kanglei@bjmu.edu.cn.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University , Beijing 100875 P. R. China.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 P. R. China.

Abstract

We report here porphodilactol derivatives and their corresponding metal complexes. These systems show promise as "all-in-one" phototheranostics and are predicated on a design strategy that involves controlling the relationship between intersystem crossing (ISC) and photothermal conversion efficiency following photoexcitation. The requisite balance was achieved by tuning the aromaticity of these porphyrinoid derivatives and forming complexes with one of two lanthanide cations, namely Gd³⁺ and Lu³⁺. The net result led to a metalloporphodilactol system, Gd-trans-2, with seemingly optimal ISC efficiency, photothermal conversion efficiency and fluorescence properties, as well as good chemical stability. Encapsulation of Gd-trans-2 within mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) allowed its evaluation for tumour diagnosis and therapy. It was found to be effective as an "all-in-one" phototheranostic that allowed for NIR fluorescence/photoacoustic dual-modal imaging while providing an excellent combined PTT/PDT therapeutic efficacy in vitro and in vivo in 4T1-tumour-bearing mice.