Preparation, characterization and cytotoxicity of carbon nanotube-chitosan-phycocyanin complex

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) or photothermal therapy (PTT) using nanomaterials has shown great prospect for cancer treatment. Phycocyanin (PC) is a photoharvesting pigment and is also an attractive candidate for PDT. The multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT) is a potent candidate for PTT due to its extraordinary photo-to-thermal energy conversion efficiency upon excitation with near-infrared (NIR) light. To date, although MWNT-CS complexes have been well studied, no report about the reconjugation of MWNT-CS with phycocyanin is available in the literature. Here, by using water-soluble chitosan (CS), we prepared and characterized a novel biomaterial, MWNT-CS-PC, with the potential for PDT and PTT. The cytotoxicity experiments found that MWNT-CS-PC exhibited cell growth inhibition activity. Moreover, with irradiation of NIR light (808 nm) or visible light (532 nm), the photoinduced cytotoxicity was indeed enhanced. These results suggest that MWNT-CS-PC may potentially serve as a future photodynamic and photothermal therapy for cancer.