Abstract

Small molecular theranostic agents play the pivot roles in the biomedical field and hold high clinical translational potential. However, it is still difficult to prepare these theranostic agents through a convenient and straightforward synthetic route. Herein, based on the electron-deficient building block boron difluoride formazanate (BDF), we designed and synthesized a novel NIR-II small molecular fluorescent dye (BDF-Ph) by flanking electron-rich triphenylamine units onto BDF to hamper the intermolecular π-π interaction, thus to achieve high fluorescence quantum yield. Then donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) structured BDF-Ph was encapsulated into amphiphilic polystyrene-g-poly (ethylene glycol) (PS-g-PEG) to prepare NIR-II fluorescent BDF-Ph NPs. BDF-Ph NPs possessed an emission peak at 975 nm with a high fluorescence quantum efficiency of 0.32% (IR1061, Φ = 1.7%) and a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 40.1%, making it an excellent NIR-II fluorescent probe for nanotheranostics. In vivo investigation illustrated that BDF-Ph NPs exhibited strong NIR-II fluorescence signals. Meanwhile, upon exposure to 808 nm laser, BDF-Ph NPs could eradicate tumors without apparent adverse effects under the direction of NIR-II fluorescence imaging. These fascinating results confirmed that BDF-Ph NPs as an alternative theranostic nanoplatform could be used for oncotherapy.

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