Construction of synergistic therapy system with multiple therapeutic effects based on CuS@Tf nanodots

In order to effectively avoid the side effects induced by multiple components and tedious synthesis process, a simple therapy system based on one material to simultaneously realize both photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) under single laser irradiation will promote the overall phototherapeutic efficiency and make the PTT/PDT system easier to operate. Here, by using transferrin (Tf) as protein template, ultrasmall CuS@transferrin nanodots (CuS@Tf NDs) were successfully synthesized through a facile one-pot protein-based biomineralization method. The obtained CuS@Tf NDs exhibited not only excellent photothermal conversion ability (34.4%) but also high photoactivated formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon 980 nm near-infrared (NIR) irradiation. By loading the drug doxorubicin (DOX) to CuS@Tf NDs, a synergistic therapy system with multiple therapeutic effects combined PTT, PDT, chemotherapy (CT) and tumor targeting properties could be perfectly implemented together by CuS@Tf-DOX NDs without any complicated post-modification process. Results from the in vitro cell experiments confirmed that these CuS@Tf-DOX NDs could produce excellent effect on cancer cells with 88.5% cell inhibition rate. In comparison with the complicated systems based on "multiple-components-in-one" strategy, this therapy system based on one single material but possess multifunctional purpose is easy to operate and more suitable for clinical applications.