A highly water-soluble triblock conjugated polymer for in vivo NIR-II imaging and photothermal therapy of cancer

作者：Lu, Xiaomei^*; Yuan, Pengcheng; Zhang, Wansu; Wu, Qi; Wang, Xiaoxiao; Zhao, Meng; Sun, Pengfei^*; Huang, Wei; Fan, Quli^*

来源：Polymer Chemistry, 2018, 9(22): 3118-3126.

DOI：10.1039/c8py00215k

• NEAR-INFRARED WINDOW
• DIKETOPYRROLOPYRROLE-BASED COPOLYMERS
• WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES
• AG2SE QUANTUM DOTS
• PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY
• LIVING MICE
• NANOPARTICLES
• FLUORESCENCE
• AGENT
• TUMOR

Applications of the second near infrared (NIR) optical window (NIR-II, 1000-1700 nm) have received increasing attention with respect to reduced scattering and negligible auto-fluorescence, thus achieving a high signal-to-background ratio for pinpointing tumors compared with NIR-I imaging. Conjugated polymers have been applied in NIR-II imaging for their advantages, such as high molar extinction coefficient, wide emission wavelength, and ease of preparation. However, currently available conjugated polymer NIR-II agents suffer from a lack of water solubility. Hence, a highly water-soluble triblock conjugated polymer (POEGMA-b-PDPP-b-POEGMA) based on diketopyrrolopyrrole was successfully prepared with a high yield. The NIR-II imaging depth of the conjugated polymer was similar to 7 mm, which is far beyond conventional NIR-I agents. Furthermore, the fluorescence quantum yield (QY) of POEGMA-b-PDPP-b-POEGMA reached up to 1.0%, which is higher than most reported NIR-II probes. This novel NIR-II conjugated polymer shows improved solubility (>10 mg mL(-1)) and greater dispersion in aqueous solution compared to those conventional conjugated polymers, due to the introduction of the water-soluble polymer POEGMA. With the help of high emission (>1000 nm), POEGMA-b-PDPP-b-POEGMA could efficiently realize the highly penetrable NIR-II imaging of tumors. In addition, POEGMA-b-PDPP-b-POEGMA could be a promising photothermal therapy agent to ablate tumors due to its high photothermal conversion efficiency (52%).

• 出版日期2018-6-14
• 单位南京邮电大学