Hou W, Lou J, Bu J, Chang E, Ding L Valic M, Jeon HH, Charron DM, Coolens C, Cui D, Chen J & Zheng G
Angewandte Chemie, 2019
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908664
A nanoemulsion with a porphyrin shell (NewPS) is created by the self‐assembly of porphyrin salt around an oil core. The NewPS has ~100 nm spherical structure with excellent colloidal stability against radical changes in temperature, mechanical agitation, pH and in serum. The NewPS system is amenable to different porphyrin salts (mono‐sodium or tris‐sodium salt) and oils (low or high density), and is capable of co‐loading with chemotherapeutics (paclitaxel). The porphyrin salt shell is essential for the nanostructure construction and enables porphyrin‐dependent optical tunability. NewPS consisting of pyropheophorbide a mono‐salt (PyroNewPS) has an ordered J‐aggregates of porphyrin shell, which produced a narrow, red‐shifted (from 671nm to 715nm) Q‐band with increased absorbance. Upon nanostructure dissociation, fluorescence and photodynamic reactivity of porphyrin monomers are restored. As a result of the spectrally distinct photoacoustic imaging (at 715nm by intact NewPS) and fluorescence increase (at 671nm by dissociated NewPS), we could track NewPS accumulation and disruption in mice bearing KB tumors to guide effective photodynamic therapy. Substituting the oil core with lipiodol® affords additional CT contrast, whereas loading paclitaxel into NewPS facilitates drug delivery. This simple two‐component NewPS offers a new nanoplatform for multimodal cancer imaging, phototherapy and image‐guided drug delivery.