Prussian blue-based theranostics for ameliorating acute kidney injury

Dong-Yang Zhang,Muhammad Rizwan Younis,Hengke Liu,Jiayingzi Wu,Peng Huang,Jing Lin,Kathy S Zhu,Chen Yang,Ting He,Shan Lei,Junle Qu

doi:10.1186/s12951-021-01006-z

Abstract

BackgroundAcute kidney injury (AKI) with high mortality rates is associated with an excess of reactive oxygen/nitrogen species (RONS) within kidney tissues. Recently, nanomedicine antioxidant therapy has been used to alleviate AKI. Herein, we synthesized ultrasmall Prussian blue nanozymes (PB NZs, 4.5 nm) as theranostic agents for magnetic resonance (MR)/photoacoustic (PA) dual-modal imaging guided AKI treatment.ResultsPB NZs exhibited multi-enzyme mimetic abilities, promoting the effective elimination of RONS both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, benefiting from their imaging contrast properties, the rapid renal accumulation of PB NZs was verified by in vivo PA/MR dual-modal imaging. Due to their excellent enrichment in the kidney and unique multi-enzyme mimetic abilities, ultrasmall PB NZs displayed superior AKI treatment efficacy compared with that of amifostine in two clinically relevant types of AKI induced murine models (either by rhabdomyolysis or cisplatin).ConclusionOur findings suggested ultrasmall PB NZs, as nanozyme theranostics, have great potential for AKI management.Graphic abstract

Highlights

Acute kidney injury (AKI), which is characterized by a rapid decline in kidney function, is an important health concern owing to its high morbidity and mortality, with an estimated 1.7 million deaths per year worldwide [1, 2]
The obtained solid sample was dissolved in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and the iron content was quantified by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)
The atomic force microscopy (AFM) image revealed an average size of Prussian blue (PB) NZs is about 4 nm and a thickness of approximately 3.5 nm (Fig. 1B, C), which is in accordance with the dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurement (Fig. 1D)

Summary

Introduction

Acute kidney injury (AKI), which is characterized by a rapid decline in kidney function, is an important health concern owing to its high morbidity and mortality, with an estimated 1.7 million deaths per year worldwide [1, 2]. Recent studies have shown that AKI pathogenesis is related to an excess of intracellular reactive oxygen/ nitrogen species (RONS) [6,7,8,9,10]. Nanozymes with multienzyme-like activities have attracted widespread attention because of prominent advantages and widely applied in the treatment of tumor and ROS-related diseases, which can continuously catalyze the removal of RONS [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33]. Acute kidney injury (AKI) with high mortality rates is associated with an excess of reactive oxygen/ nitrogen species (RONS) within kidney tissues. We synthesized ultrasmall Prussian blue nanozymes (PB NZs, 4.5 nm) as theranostic agents for magnetic resonance (MR)/photoacoustic (PA) dual-modal imaging guided AKI treatment

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Results

Conclusion