One-pot synthesis of albumin-gadolinium stabilized polypyrrole nanotheranostic agent for magnetic resonance imaging guided photothermal therapy

• Published in: Biomaterials 2018-04, Vol.161, p.1-10
• Main Authors: Yang, Zhe, He, Wenshan, Zheng, Hongyi, Wei, Jielin, Liu, Pei, Zhu, Wei, Lin, Leping, Zhang, Li, Yi, Changfeng, Xu, Zushun, Ren, Jinghua
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Albumins - chemistry; Animals; Biomimetic mineralization; Cell Line, Tumor; Female; Gadolinium - chemistry; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Mice; Mice, Inbred BALB C; MRI; Phototherapy - methods; Photothermal therapy; Polymers - chemistry; Polypyrrole; Pyrroles - chemistry; Theranostic Nanomedicine - methods
• ISSN: 0142-9612; 1878-5905
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2018.01.026

Theranostic agents with perfect properties are needed urgently for the development of imaging guided photothermal therapy (PTT). In this work, Gd-integrated polypyrrole nanotheranostic agent (PPy@BSA-Gd) was successfully built through selecting bovine serum albumin (BSA) as both stabilizers for polymerization and biomimetic mineralization in "one pot". The obtained PPy@BSA-Gd possessed high stability and excellent photothermal property. Besides, relevant cellular assays indicated that PPy@BSA-Gd had fantastic cytocompatibility which could be further internalized by cancer cells. Due to their high longitudinal relaxivity value (r1 = 10.203 mM−1 s−1), PPy@BSA-Gd could serve as considerable probe for T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). After tail vein injection of PPy@BSA-Gd, the MR signal of tumor section exhibited a time-dependent increase, indicating effective tumor accumulation of PPy@BSA-Gd. Notably, when exposed to 808 nm laser, the tumor growth of PPy@BSA-Gd treated mice could be inhibited by photothermal ablation successfully. All the results demonstrated the well-designed PPy@BSA-Gd have the potential for tumor diagnose and photothermal therapy.