Tumor pH-Responsive Albumin/Polyaniline Assemblies for Amplified Photoacoustic Imaging and Augmented Photothermal Therapy.

Tumor pH-Responsive Albumin/Polyaniline Assemblies for Amplified Photoacoustic Imaging and Augmented Photothermal Therapy.:

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Tumor pH-Responsive Albumin/Polyaniline Assemblies for Amplified Photoacoustic Imaging and Augmented Photothermal Therapy.

Small. 2019 10;15(42):e1902926

Authors: Tian Q, Li Y, Jiang S, An L, Lin J, Wu H, Huang P, Yang S

Abstract

Tumor-microenvironment-responsive theranostics have great potential for precision diagnosis and effective treatment of cancer. Polyaniline (PANI) is the first reported pH-responsive organic photothermal agent and is widely used as a theranostic agent. However, tumor pH-responsive PANI-based theranostic agents are not explored, mainly because the conversion from the emeraldine base (EB) to emeraldine salt (ES) state of PANI requires pH < 4, which is lower than tumor acidic microenvironment. Herein, a tumor pH-responsive PANI-based theranostic agent is designed and prepared for amplified photoacoustic imaging guided augmented photothermal therapy (PTT), through intermolecular acid-base reactions between carboxyl groups of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and imine moieties of PANI. The albumin/PANI assemblies (BSA-PANI) can convert from the EB to ES state at pH < 7, accompanied by the absorbance redshift from visible to near-infrared region. Both in vitro and in vivo results demonstrate that tumor acidic microenvironment can trigger both the photoacoustic imaging (PAI) signal amplification and the PTT efficacy enhancement of BSA-PANI assemblies. This work not only highlights that BSA-PANI assemblies overcome the limitation of low-pH protonation, but also provides a facile assembly strategy for a tumor pH-responsive PANI-based nanoplatform for cancer theranostics.



PMID: 31448572 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]