In situ fabrication of metal-organic framework derived hybrid nanozymes for enhanced nanozyme-photothermal therapy of bacteria-infected wounds

In recent years, nanozyme-photothermal therapy (NPT) has attracted enormous interests owing to their enhanced therapeutic effects and less adverse effects in the treatment of infectious diseases. However, the development of nanozyme-photothermal agents (NPAs) that can rapidly, efficiently and synergistically combating pathogenic bacteria remains a huge challenge due to the limitation of size effect. Herein, by decorating platinum nanozymes on Zn-based photosensitizer, we report a novel metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived hybrid nanozymes antibacterial strategy for enhanced NPT. This strategy can not only prevent the aggregation of platinum nanozymes and effectively reduce the mass transfer resistance during the kinetic reaction, but also inhibit the photoelectron-hole recombination in the process of photothermal therapy (PTT) and improve the photothermal conversion performance. In the presence of a low concentration of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), the superior nanocatalytic activity of the MOF-derived hybrid nanozymes can effectively catalyze the release of H2O2 to generate toxic hydroxyl radical (•OH), resulting in the increase of bacterial membrane permeability and thermal sensitivity. Once the near-infrared laser is introduced, the nanozyme-photothermal antibacterial platform can play the role of “nanoknife” to further induce the death of the damaged bacteria by physical cutting. In vitro and vivo in antibacterial assays confirm that the MOF-derived hybrid nanozymes have excellent antibacterial properties, which can serve as an antibacterial candidate with negligible adverse effect. Therefore, this work will open a new avenue for MOF-derived hybrid nanozymes in biomedical application.