One-step synthesis of multifunctional nanoparticles for CT/PA imaging guided breast cancer photothermal therapy

Advances in nanotheranostics have promoted the development of precision medicine, which has great potential as a weapon for clinical diagnosis and therapy of tumors. However, the combination of three functional principle components (imaging probes, therapeutic agents and surface coating) in traditional theranostic system is difficult to be achieved in only one step, while undergoing multiple synthesis procedures, time-consuming process and unknown toxicity. Herein, we fabricated iodinated polyaniline ( [email protected] ) nanoparticles via a facile one-step synthesis approach integrating chemical oxidative polymerization and iodine-doping process for computed tomography (CT) imaging and photoacoustic (PA) imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT). Iodic acid (HIO 3 ) as an oxidant induces chemical oxidation polymerization of aniline monomers. Meanwhile, iodine is incorporated into the polyaniline structural units in the process of polymerization to obtain [email protected] nanoparticles. Moreover, the l -cysteine (LC) has an effect on diameter of [email protected] nanoparticles, which enables nanoparticles have size-controlled spherical morphology and good colloidal stability. The hemolysis assay and cytotoxicity assessment verified the good biocompatibility of [email protected] Moreover, our [email protected] nanoparticles could not only exhibit appealing PTT efficiency, but also achieve excellent CT/PA dual-mode imaging effect. The histological evaluations suggested the negligible toxicity of [email protected] in vivo . This is the first time to our knowledge that multifunctional [email protected] nanoparticles were prepared by an ingenious one-step method. This work not only highlights a one-step strategy that simplified the complex synthesis of [email protected] nanoparticles, but also provides insight for further biomedical application of “all-in-one” theranostic agent.