Aggregation-Induced Emission-Active Organic Nanoagent with High Photothermal Conversion Efficiency for Near-Infrared Imaging-Guided Tumor Photothermal Therapy

Photothermal therapy (PTT) provides a great prospect for noninvasive cancer therapy. However, it is still highly challenging to construct photothermal agents (PTAs) with the desired performances for imaging-guided PTT applications. Herein, a D-A-D-type naphthalene diamine (NDI)-based photothermal nano-PTAs NDS-BPN NP with near-infrared region (NIR) emission at 822 nm, aggregation-induced emission (AIE), high photothermal conversion efficiency (55.05%), and excellent photothermal stability is successfully designed and prepared through a simple two-step engineering method by using a new AIE molecule NDS-BPN and DSPE-PEG2000 as precursors. The prepared PTT nanoagents NDS-BPN NPs have been further applied for efficient photothermal ablation of cancer cells in vitro and also achieved the NIR fluorescent image-guided PTT tumor therapy in vivo with satisfactory results. We believe that this work provides an attractive NIR AIE NDI-based nano-PTA for the phototherapy of tumors as well as develops the construction strategy of NDI molecular-based photothermal nanoagents with desired performances for imaging-guided PTT.