Facile construction of polycation/Au@CuS nanohybrids for synergistic gene/photothermal therapy

The integration of Au and CuS into a nanostructure holds promise for tumor photothermal therapy (PTT) due to the unique plasmonic coupling effect in the second near infrared (NIR-II) region. However, the therapeutic efficacy of monotherapy is limited, while the facile preparation of Au-CuS-based nanohybrids for enhanced tumor therapy remains challenging. Herein, a facile method is proposed to fabricate polycation/Au@CuS nanohybrids (ASC-PGEA) comprising Au nanorods, CuS nanoparticles and polycationic cloak for gene/photothermal combination therapy. ASC-PGEA nanohybrids possess favorable cellular uptake and gene transfection efficiency, which could effectively deliver antioncogene p53 to achieve gene therapy (GT). Taking advantage of the enhanced photothermal effect, ASC-PGEA-mediated therapy shows promising therapeutic effect both in vitro and in vivo, and the growth of tumors is substantially inhibited. In particular, synergistic therapy is realized due to PTT-enhanced GT. Additionally, the feasibility of ASC-PGEA to visualize and monitor the therapeutic process by computed tomography imaging is demonstrated. This work presents a facile strategy to construct polycation/Au@CuS nanohybrids to achieve synergistic gene/photothermal tumor therapy.