Pyrrole-Doped Polydopamine-Pyrrole (PDA-nPY) Nanoparticles with Tunable Size and Improved NIR Absorption for Photothermal Therapy

Polydopamine (PDA) as a melanin-like biomimetic material with excellent biocompatibility, full spectrum light absorption capacity and antioxidation property has been extensively applied in the biomedical field. Based on the high reactivity of dopamine (DA), exploiting new strategies to fabricate novel PDA-based nano-biomaterials with controllable size and improved performance is valuable and desirable. Herein, we reported a facile way to synthesize pyrrole-doped polydopamine-pyrrole nanoparticles (PDA-nPY NPs) with tunable size and enhanced near-infrared (NIR) absorption capacity through self-oxidative polymerization of DA with PY in an alkaline ethanol/H2O/NH4OH solution. The PDA-nPY NPs maintain excellent biocompatibility and surface reactivity as PDA. By regulating the volume of added PY, PDA-150PY NPs with a smaller size (<100 nm) and four-fold higher absorption intensity at 808 nm than that of PDA can be successfully fabricated. In vitro and in vivo experiments effectively further demonstrate that PDA-150PY NPs can effectively inhibit tumor growth and completely thermally ablate a tumor. It is believed that these PY doped PDA-nPY NPs can be a potential photothermal (PT) agent in biomedical application.Keywords:polydopamine;pyrrole;self-oxidative polymerization;photothermal treatment;cancer therapy