Hybrid FeWO4-Hyaluronic Acid Nanoparticles as a Targeted Nanotheranostic Agent for Multimodal Imaging-Guided Tumor Photothermal Therapy

Background: Development of versatile nanoplatform still remains a great challenge due to multistep synthesis and complicated compositions. Therefore, it is significant to develop a facile method to synthesize a nanocomposite to achieve multimodal imaging and even imaging-guided cancer therapeutics. Methods and Results: In our study, hyaluronic acid-functionalized iron (II) tungstate nanoparticles (HA-FeWO 4 NPs) were successfully synthesized as a versatile nanoplatform by a facile one-pot hydrothermal procedure. The formed multifunctional HA-FeWO 4 NPs were investigated via a series of characterization techniques, which demonstrated good biocompatibility, excellent dispersion, low cytotoxicity, active tumor-targeting ability and high photothermal efficiency. Furthermore, tumor was clearly visualized by HA-FeWO 4 NPs with multimodal imaging of infrared thermal imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography imaging in 4T1 tumor bearing mice. More importantly, HA-FeWO 4 could achieve multimodal imaging-guided photothermal therapy of 4T1 tumors. Conclusion: The constructed HA-FeWO 4 NPs have great potential as ideal nanotheranostic agents for multimodal imaging and even imaging-guided cancer theranostics in biological systems. Keywords: theranostics, multimodal imaging, photothermal therapy, diagnostic imaging, nanomedicine