A self-coated hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticle for tumor targeting and chemo-photothermal therapy

Chemotherapy combined with photothermal therapy, a promising strategy for cancer treatment, has a high potential to control drug release and improve therapeutic efficacy. Inspired by this, a pH/NIR dual-responsive drug delivery system (DOX/HMSN@PDA-HA nanoparticles, simplified as DHPH NPs) based on hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs) was designed for targeted therapy of tumor, by self-coating polydopamine-modified hyaluronic acid (HA-PDA) layer. Doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded into HMSNs for chemotherapy, while HA-PDA coating acted as photothermal therapy agent with tumor-targeted capability. Characterizations suggest that DHPH nanoparticles have been successfully constructed with excellent drug loading capacity (36.91%) and satisfactory photothermal conversion efficiency (25.74%). Furthermore, in vitro results indicate that DHPH nanoparticles could precisely target human hepatocellular liver carcinoma cells and effectively suppress the tumor cells growth under 808 nm laser irradiation (2 W cm −2 ). Therefore, this study presents a feasible strategy for developing efficient platform for tumor-targeted chemo-photothermal therapy.