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Hollow carbon nanospheres loaded with upconversion nanoparticles for chemo-photothermal synergistic cancer therapy

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Abstract

Nanomaterials possess multidisciplinary capabilities in cancer diagnosis and treatment, including imaging and therapeutic, and thus have wide range of applications in the field of nanomedicine. To exploit these capabilities, herein we report a novel nanoplatform of upconversion nanoparticle (UCNPs)-decorated hollow mesoporous carbon nanoparticles (HMCNs@UCNPs) prepared by a facile hydrothermal approach. Morphological and structural analyses of the newly synthesized nanomaterial were performed using high-resolution TEM (HR-TEM), XRD, and BET techniques. The porous nature of the HMCNs@UCNPs nanomaterial further assisted to load anticancer drug (DOX, doxorubicin) effectively. Hence, the DOX-modified nanoplatform HMCNs@UCNPs-DOX worked as a multimodal theranostic probe, concurrently demonstrating chemotherapeutic as well as photothermal effects subjected to NIR-stimulation. Additionally, synergistic effects of the developed nanoplatform were confirmed by in vitro and in vivo studies using MCF-7 cell line and mouse models, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This work was primarily supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22274148), the Jilin Science and Technology Development Program (YDZJ202301ZYTS544, 20220204098YY, YDZJ202201ZYTS351), and the Jilin Province Development and Reform Commission (2023C041-8).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gansu Key Laboratory for Environmental Pollution Prediction and Control, College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaorui Jiao & Yun Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaorui Jiao, Wei Zhou, Mahmood Hassan Akhtar, Di Demi He, Weiping Zhou, Lang Yao, Ning Liu & Cong Yu

  3. University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Zhou, Weiping Zhou, Lang Yao, Ning Liu & Cong Yu

  4. School of Natural Sciences and Humanities, National University of Technology, Islamabad, 440000, Pakistan

    Mahmood Hassan Akhtar

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  1. Xiaorui Jiao
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  2. Wei Zhou
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Contributions

XJ contributed to conceptualization, investigation, and writing-original draft. WZ, MHA, and WZ contributed to investigation and writing-original draft. LY and DDH contributed to cell experiments. YZ, NL, and CY contributed to investigation, data curation, formal analysis, validation, and supervision.

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Correspondence to Yun Zhang, Ning Liu or Cong Yu.

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10853_2023_8508_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Materials and characterization; XRD profile of NaGdF4: Yb3+, Nd3+, Tm3+; UV–Vis absorption spectra of HMCNs and HMCNs@UCNPs; UV–Vis absorption spectra of different concentrations of HMCNs@UCNPs; heating–cooling curve of the HMCNs@UCNPs aqueous dispersion (50 μg mL−1) under 808-nm laser irradiation (0.5 W cm−2); temperature changes of the HMCNs@UCNPs sample solution under one on–off laser irradiation cycle, and the linear fitting of − lnθ with time; body weight changes of the mice under different treatments; H&E images of heart, liver, spleen, lung, and kidney for various treatment groups after two-week treatment (DOCX 1654 KB)

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Jiao, X., Zhou, W., Akhtar, M.H. et al. Hollow carbon nanospheres loaded with upconversion nanoparticles for chemo-photothermal synergistic cancer therapy. J Mater Sci 58, 8034–8046 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08508-1

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