Gold nanocage decorated pH-sensitive micelle for highly effective photothermo-chemotherapy and photoacoustic imaging.

Abstract

The novelty of the manuscript is its multifunctional system which incorporates anticancer drug DOX in its pH-sensitive core and acts as a template to introduce a gold nanocage. This nanomedicine presents potentials of sequestrating drug molecules in blood circulation but releasing them inside tumor upon responding to the acidic microenvironment therein. Exposure to NIR laser further expedited the pH-sensitive DOX release and promoted DOX penetration into cancer tissues far away from the vasculature. Consequently, the combined photothermo-chemotherapy showed synergistic effects to inhibit tumor growth and prolong animal survival in nude mice bearing human SKOV-3 ovarian tumor. Moreover, owing to the decoration with gold nanocage, the tumor accumulation and intratumor diffusion of the micelles were easily trackable using photoacoustic imaging.