Evidence Hub

Biodegradable black phosphorus-based nanospheres for in vivo photothermal cancer therapy

Jundong Shao, Hanhan Xie, Hao Huang, Zhibin Li, Zhengbo Sun, Yanhua Xu, Quanlan Xiao, Xue‐Feng Yu et al.

Nature Communications, 2016

1,012 citations

Abstract

Photothermal therapy (PTT) offers many advantages such as high efficiency and minimal invasiveness, but clinical adoption of PTT nanoagents have been stifled by unresolved concerns such as the biodegradability as well as long-term toxicity. Herein, poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) loaded with black phosphorus quantum dots (BPQDs) is processed by an emulsion method to produce biodegradable BPQDs/PLGA nanospheres. The hydrophobic PLGA not only isolates the interior BPQDs from oxygen and water to enhance the photothermal stability, but also control the degradation rate of the BPQDs. The in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that the BPQDs/PLGA nanospheres have inappreciable toxicity and good biocompatibility, and possess excellent PTT efficiency and tumour targeting ability as evidenced by highly efficient tumour ablation under near infrared (NIR) laser illumination. These BP-based nanospheres combine biodegradability and biocompatibility with high PTT efficiency, thus promising high clinical potential.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free