Developing green or red light-activated drug delivery systems (DDSs) for cancer treatment is highly desirable. Herein, we have reported a green light-responsive single component-based organic fluorescence nano-DDS by simply anchoring 2-hydroxy-6-naphthacyl (phototrigger) on both sides of the 1,5-diaminonaphthalene (DAN) chromophore. This green light (λ ≥ 500 nm)-activated DDS released two equivalents of the anticancer drug (valproic acid) in a spatio-temporally controlled manner. Our photoresponsive DDS [DAN-bis(HO-Naph-VPA)] exhibited interesting properties such as excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) accompanied with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomena. AIE initiated the photorelease, and ESIPT enhanced the rate of the photorelease. Further, in vitro studies revealed that our green light-activated nano-DDS exhibited good cytocompatibility, excellent cellular internalization, and effective cancer cell killing ability.
Keywords: AIE; ESIPT; cellular imaging; green light; nano-DDS; uncaging.