Organic Semiconducting Pro‐nanostimulants for Near‐Infrared Photoactivatable Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract In this study, an organic semiconducting pro‐nanostimulant (OSPS) with a near‐infrared (NIR) photoactivatable immunotherapeutic action for synergetic cancer therapy is presented. OSPS comprises a semiconducting polymer nanoparticle (SPN) core and an immunostimulant conjugated through a singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ) cleavable linkers. Upon NIR laser irradiation, OSPS generates both heat and 1 O 2 to exert combinational phototherapy not only to ablate tumors but also to produce tumor‐associated antigens. More importantly, NIR irradiation triggers the cleavage of 1 O 2 ‐cleavable linkers, triggering the remote release of the immunostimulants from OSPS to modulate the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Thus, the released tumor‐associated antigens in conjunction with activated immunostimulants induce a synergistic antitumor immune response after OSPS‐mediated phototherapy, resulting in the inhibited growth of both primary/distant tumors and lung metastasis in a mouse xenograft model, which is not observed for sole phototherapy.