Assembled Vitamin B2 Nanocrystals with Optical Waveguiding and Photosensitizing Properties for Potential Biomedical...

Great success has been achieved in recent years in the development of synthetic or assembled nanobiomaterials. Among these, biomolecule-based nanoarchitectures with special optical property are of particular interest. Here, we demonstrate that vitamin B₂ nanocrystals assembled as nanorods can be obtained with precise control. Excitingly, such one-dimensional nanostructures not only exhibit intrinsic optical waveguiding properties but also the ability to sensitize oxygen to produce reactive oxygen species. With these properties, we applied the obtained vitamin B₂ nanorods under remotely localized light illumination into single tumour cells in vitro for anticancer photodynamic therapy. Further, vitamin B₂ nanorods were explored for in vivo photodynamic therapy by using a tumour model. With such bionanostructures, new features and functions of vitamin B₂ and its derivatives have been developed.