Plasma membrane activatable polymeric nanotheranostics with self-enhanced light-triggered photosensitizer cellular influx for photodynamic cancer therapy

To address the issue of low cellular uptake of photosensitizers by cancer cells in photodynamic therapy (PDT), we designed a smart plasma membrane-activatable polymeric nanodrug by conjugating the photosensitizer protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) with glycol chitosan (GC). The as-prepared GC-PEG-PpIX can self-assemble into core-shell nanoparticles (NPs) in aqueous solution and the fluorescence of PpIX moieties in the inner core is highly quenched due to strong π – π stacking. Interestingly, when encountering plasma membranes, the GC-PEG-PpIX NPs can disassemble and stably attach to plasma membranes due to the membrane affinity of PpIX moieties, which effectively suppresses the self-quenching of PpIX, leading to significantly enhanced fluorescence and singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ) production upon laser irradiation. The massively produced 1 O 2 can compromise the integrity of the plasma membrane , enabling the influx of extracellular nanoagents into cells to promote cell death upon further laser irradiation. Through local injection, the membrane anchored GC-PEG-PpIX enables strong physical association with tumor cells and exhibits highly enhanced in vivo fluorescence at the tumor site. Besides, excellent tumor accumulation and prolonged tumor retention of GC-PEG-PpIX were realized after intravenous injection, which ensured its effective imaging-guided PDT.