Sulphur doped carbon dots enhance photodynamic therapy via PI3K/Akt signalling pathway

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising approach for cancer treatment, and the underlying signalling pathway changes has been carried out for studying the PDT mechanisms, but is majorly limited to organic photosensitizers (PSs). For the emerging nano-PSs typically possessing higher ¹ O₂ quantum yield, few mechanistic studies were carried out, which limited their further applications in clinical therapeutics. PI3K/Akt signalling pathway, a most frequently activated signalling network in cancers, could promote cancer cell survival, but was seldom reported in previous PDT studies mediated by nano-PSs.

Sulphur doped carbon dots (S-CDs) was prepared via a hydrothermal synthetic route and was characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and so on. CCK-8 assay and Annexin V/PI staining were performed to demonstrate the death of cancer cells, Western blot, RT-PCR and immunofluorescence were employed to explore the underlying mechanism, and variation of PI3K/Akt and other signalling pathways was detected by Western blot.

S-CDs was successfully synthesized, and it was much more efficient compared with classic organic PSs. S-CDs could induce cancer cell death through mitochondria mediated cell apoptosis with the imbalance of Bcl-2 family proteins and caspase cascade via several signalling pathways. Low concentration of S-CDs could effectively inhibit PI3K/Akt pathway and promote p38/JNK pathway, on one way inhibiting cancer cell survival and on the other way promoting cell apoptosis.

Herein, we found that S-CDs acted as an inhibitor of the PI3K/Akt pathway for efficient cancer cell killing, thus yielding in a higher PDT performance over the existing photosensitizers.