Abstract
Bacterial infections are closely related to the initiation of cancer, and the killing of cancer-related bacteria can greatly improve the therapeutic effect of cancer. Image-guided photodynamic therapy (PDT) can solve bacterial drug resistance, which has attracted wide attention as a non-invasive and safe cancer treatment method. In this study, we design and synthesis a new amphiphilic tetraphenylethylene-based photosensitizer TPETP-TG, and its compared compound TPETP-Me, for cancer cell ablation and bacteria killing. TPETP-TG bears the hydrophilic triethylene glycol (TG) tail and a positive pyridinium salt with a strong electron push–pull effect. It self-assembles nano-aggregation in aqueous solution, and emits a typical AIE characteristics fluorescence at 635 nm. The TPETP-TG aggregations show a good photostability and biocompatibility, and also a high reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation under the white light irradiation, which is superior to the control photosensitizer TPETP-Me. TPETP-TG selectively targets mitochondria in cancer cells, and makes it ablation under the white light irradiation. In addition, TPETP-TG is also successfully used for photodynamic killing E. coli and S. aureus at low working concentrations. Furthermore, the therapeutic experiments with bacterial-infected zebrafish imply that TPETP-TG effectively eliminates the bacteria and improves their survival rate under light irradiation.
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