Electrically Conducting Polymer Nanoparticles to Selectively Target and Treat Metastatic Colorectal Cancer.

摘要

We have demonstrated that a low band gap D-A conjugated polymer P3, that absorbs in the NIR (~800 nm), can be fabricated into spherical nanoparticles (nano-P3) using Pluronic F127 as a soft template. Nano-P3 (~67 nm) was found to be very stable in aqueous media. A heating efficiency curve showed that it took ~7 g of nano-P3 to change the temperature of the solution by 20 deg C after one minute. This number is at a lower concentration than other donor acceptor polymer nanoparticles, such as nano-PCPDTBSe and nano-PCPDTBT, which may be due to P3 having a 20% greater molar absorptivity than PCPDTBSe. The nanoparticles, in the absence of NIR light, showed no significant toxicity towards CT26 colorectal cancer cells at concentrations of 5-200 g/mL. Cell viability assays showed that in the presence of NIR light, nano-P3 was shown to generate significant heating to destroy colorectal cancer cells at very low nanoparticle conentration (~ 15 g/mL). Using the lowest possible concentration for photothermal ablation is advantageous for translating D-A ECPNs to clinical applications.