A Sub-Nanostructural Transformable Nanozyme for Tumor Photocatalytic Therapy

Xi Hu; Nan Wang; Xia Guo; Zeyu Liang; Heng Sun; Hongwei Liao; Fan Xia; Yunan Guan; Jiyoung Lee; Daishun Ling; Fangyuan Li

doi:10.1007/s40820-022-00848-y

A Sub-Nanostructural Transformable Nanozyme for Tumor Photocatalytic Therapy

Nanomicro Lett. 2022 Apr 12;14(1):101. doi: 10.1007/s40820-022-00848-y.

Authors

Xi Hu^#^{1

2

3}, Nan Wang^#¹, Xia Guo^#¹, Zeyu Liang^#^{1

4}, Heng Sun¹, Hongwei Liao¹, Fan Xia¹, Yunan Guan¹, Jiyoung Lee^{1

5}, Daishun Ling^{6

7

8}, Fangyuan Li^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Pharmaceutics, Hangzhou Institute of Innovative Medicine, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, People's Republic of China.
² Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Clinical Pharmacy, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, 310003, People's Republic of China.
⁴ WLA Laboratories, Shanghai, 201203, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Department of Biomedical-Chemical Engineering, The Catholic University of Korea, 43 Jibong-ro, Wonmi-gu, Bucheon-Si, Gyeonggi-do, 14662, Republic of Korea.
⁶ Institute of Pharmaceutics, Hangzhou Institute of Innovative Medicine, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, People's Republic of China. dsling@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁷ Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, People's Republic of China. dsling@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁸ WLA Laboratories, Shanghai, 201203, People's Republic of China. dsling@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁹ Institute of Pharmaceutics, Hangzhou Institute of Innovative Medicine, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, People's Republic of China. lfy@zju.edu.cn.
¹⁰ WLA Laboratories, Shanghai, 201203, People's Republic of China. lfy@zju.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The structural change-mediated catalytic activity regulation plays a significant role in the biological functions of natural enzymes. However, there is virtually no artificial nanozyme reported that can achieve natural enzyme-like stringent spatiotemporal structure-based catalytic activity regulation. Here, we report a sub-nanostructural transformable gold@ceria (STGC-PEG) nanozyme that performs tunable catalytic activities via near-infrared (NIR) light-mediated sub-nanostructural transformation. The gold core in STGC-PEG can generate energetic hot electrons upon NIR irradiation, wherein an internal sub-nanostructural transformation is initiated by the conversion between CeO₂ and electron-rich state of CeO_2-x, and active oxygen vacancies generation via the hot-electron injection. Interestingly, the sub-nanostructural transformation of STGC-PEG enhances peroxidase-like activity and unprecedentedly activates plasmon-promoted oxidase-like activity, allowing highly efficient low-power NIR light (50 mW cm^-2)-activated photocatalytic therapy of tumors. Our atomic-level design and fabrication provide a platform to precisely regulate the catalytic activities of nanozymes via a light-mediated sub-nanostructural transformation, approaching natural enzyme-like activity control in complex living systems.

Keywords: Catalytic activity; Nanozymes; Photocatalytic therapy; Reactive oxygen species; Sub-nanostructural transformation.