Black Phosphorus Nanosheets Integrated with Gold Nanoparticles and Polypyrrole for Synergistic Sonodynamic and Photothermal Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Intractable cancer has threatened human health all the time. Emerging sonodynamic and photothermal therapy based on biocompatible black phosphorus (BP) nanomaterials have become an attractive strategy due to the satisfactory synergistic effect, low side effect, and good biocompatibility. However, sonodynamic therapy of pure black phosphorus nanosheets (BPS) is limited for fast electron recombination owing to its special band gap. To solve this challenge, the modified nanocomposites (NCs) integrating gold nanoparticles and polypyrrole (PPy) with BPS were harvested through a moderate approach. The nanocomposites showed the superior in vitro sonodynamic and photothermal conversion effect through tumor cells. Moreover, compared with most of the reported two-dimensional nanomaterials, it was demonstrated that Au-BPS-PPy-PEG nanocomposites (i.e., GBP-PEG NCs) have the advantages of the synergistic therapeutic effect and ignorable side effect through the 4T1-bearing tumor model and biocompatible evaluation, respectively, attributing to the enhanced electron transfer capacity, good biocompatibility of BPS, and prominent photothermal conversion capacity of PPy. The above results indicate that the prepared NCs have good application prospects in the field of biomaterials for cancer therapy.