Bistratal Au@Bi2S3 nanobones for excellent NIR-triggered/multimodal imaging-guided synergistic therapy for liver cancer

To fabricate a highly biocompatible nanoplatform enabling synergistic therapy and real-time imaging, novel [email protected]2S3 core shell nanobones (NBs) ([email protected]2S3 NBs) with Au nanorods as cores were synthesized. The combination of Au nanorods with Bi2S3 film made the [email protected]2S3 NBs exhibit ultrahigh photothermal (PT) conversion efficiency, remarkable photoacoustic (PA) imaging and high computed tomography (CT) performance; these [email protected]2S3 NBs thus are a promising nanotheranostic agent for PT/PA/CT imaging. Subsequently, poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone)-modified [email protected]2S3 NBs ([email protected]2S3-PVP NBs) were successfully loaded with the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX), and a satisfactory pH sensitive release profile was achieved, thus revealing the great potential of [email protected]2S3-PVP NBs in chemotherapy as a drug carrier to deliver DOX into cancer cells. Both in vitro and in vivo investigations demonstrated that the [email protected]2S3-PVP NBs possessed multiple desired features for cancer therapy, including extremely low toxicity, good biocompatibility, high drug loading ability, precise tumor targeting and effective accumulation. Highly efficient ablation of the human liver cancer cell HepG2 was achieved through [email protected]2S3-PVP NB-mediated photothermal therapy (PTT). As both a contrast enhancement probe and therapeutic agent, [email protected]2S3-PVP NBs provided outstanding NIR-triggered multi-modal PT/PA/CT imaging-guided PTT and effectively inhibited the growth of HepG2 liver cancer cells via synergistic chemo/PT therapy.