A novel BODIPY-based nano-photosensitizer with aggregation-induced emission for cancer photodynamic therapy

摘要

The discovery of aggregation induced enmission(AIE)effect provides opportunities for the rapid development of fuorescence imaging-guided photodynamic therapy(PDT).In this work,a boron dipyrromethene(BODIPY)-based photosensitizer(ET-BDP-O)with AIE characteristics was developed,in which the two linear arms of BODIPY group were linked with triphenylamine to form an electron Donor-Acceptor-Donor(D-A-D)architecture while side chain was equipped with triethylene glycol group.ET-BDP-O was able to directly self-assemble into nanoparticles(NPs)without supplement of any other matrices or stabilizers due to its amphiphilic property.The as-prepared ET-BDP-O NPs had an excellent colloid stability with the size of 125 nm.Benefiting from the AIE property,ET-BDP-O NPs could generate strong fluorescence and reactive oxygen species under light-emitting diode light rradiation(60mW/cm2).After inter-nalized in cancer cells,ET-BDP-O NPs were able to emit bright red fuorescence signal for bioimaging.In addition,the cell viability assay demonstrated that the ET-BDP-O NPs exhibited excellent photocytotoxicity against cancer cells,while negligible cytotoicity under dark envi-ronment.Thus,ET-BDP-O NPs might be regarded as a promising photosensitizer for fluores-cence imaging-guided PDT in future.