Bioengineered nanogenerator with sustainable reactive oxygen species storm for self-reinforcing sono-chemodynamic oncotherapy

Abstract

Oxidative stress-based antitumor modalities derived from reactive oxygen species (ROS) storms have attracted increasing attention. Nevertheless, low delivery efficiency, poor selectivity, hypoxia and overexpressed glutathione (GSH) have severely restricted the sustainable generation of the ROS storm in tumor cells. Herein, we design a bioengineered nanogenerator by coordination-driven co-assembly of sonosensitizer indocyanine green (ICG), Fenton-like agent copper ion (CuⅡ) and mitochondrial respiratory inhibitor metformin (MET), which is then camouflaged by a cancer cytomembrane to induce a sustainable intracellular ROS storm for on-demand self-reinforcing sono-chemodynamic oncotherapy. Such a nanogenerator with a core–shell structure, suitable diameter and outstanding stability can efficiently accumulate in tumor regions and then internalize into tumor cells through the camouflaging and homologous targeting strategy of the cancer cytomembrane. The nanogenerator shows an exceptional instability under the triple stimulations of acidic lysosomes, overexpressed GSH and ultrasound (US) radiation, thereby resulting in the rapid disassembly and burst drug release. Interestingly, the released MET significantly enhances the sonodynamic therapy (SDT) efficacy of the released ICG by inhibiting mitochondrial respiration and meanwhile the released CuⅡ obviously reduces ROS elimination by downregulating overexpressed GSH for self-amplifying and self-protecting the intracellular ROS storm. Moreover, such a nanogenerator almost completely achieves the tumor ablation in vivo in a single therapy cycle. Taken together, our bioengineered nanogenerator with a sustainable ROS storm can provide a promising strategy for ROS storm-based oncotherapy.