Novel application of NIR photoacoustic absorbing dyes in thermosensitive micelles

Abstract

Near-infrared (NIR) absorbing dyes have been attached much importance recently, since the promising prospect in photoacoustic (PA) imaging and photothermal (PT) therapy in cancer treatment. In this work, PA signal and PT effect of pyrene derivatives (C12 and C13) prepared via click reaction were evaluated, systematically. It was studied about the further application of loading the representative trisubstituted pyrene derivative (C13) into biocompatible liposomes and subsequent PA measurement. C13 showed the excellent PA effect, whether it's embedded or not. Since temperature increment of the dyes were remarkable in PT test, the same representative derivative C13 was picked and loaded into PNIPAM-b-PNBM polymer micelles as photothermal conversion agent. Preliminary studies suggested that the trisubstituted pyrene derivatives had great potential to replace the function of temperature stimulus.