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Abstract
Chemo-photothermal nanotheranostics has the advantage of synergistic therapeutic effect,
providing opportunities for optimized cancer therapy. However, current chemo-photothermal
nanotheranostic systems generally comprise more than three components, encountering
the potential issues of unstable nanostructures and unexpected conflicts in optical
and biophysical properties among different components. We herein synthesize an amphiphilic
semiconducting polymer (PEG-PCB) and utilize it as a multifunctional nanocarrier to
simplify chemo-photothermal nanotheranostics. PEG-PCB has a semiconducting backbone
that not only serves as the diagnostic component for near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence
and photoacoustic (PA) imaging, but also acts as the therapeutic agent for photothermal
therapy. In addition, the hydrophobic backbone of PEG-PCB provides strong hydrophobic
and π-π interactions with the aromatic anticancer drug such as doxorubicin for drug
encapsulation and delivery. Such a trifunctionality of PEG-PCB eventually results
in a greatly simplified nanotheranostic system with only two components but multimodal
imaging and therapeutic capacities, permitting effective NIR fluorescence/PA imaging
guided chemo-photothermal therapy of cancer in living mice. Our study thus provides
a molecular engineering approach to integrate essential properties into one polymer
for multimodal nanotheranostics.