Phosphorescence Enzyme-Mimics for Time-Resolved Sensitive Diagnostics and Environment-Adaptive Specific Catalytic...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Enzyme mimics (EMs) are valuable in biomedicine but often lack environmental adaptability for simultaneous diagnosis and therapy.
• Developing EMs that can sense and respond to their environment is crucial for advanced biomedical applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To synthesize silicon-based phosphorescence enzyme-mimics (SiPEMs) with environment-adaptive catalytic activities.
• To investigate the potential of SiPEMs for sensitive tumor diagnosis and specific catalytic cancer therapeutics.

Main Methods:

• Coordination modulation strategy to engineer atomic-level Co-N4 structures within SiPEMs.
• Utilized Si-O networks for stabilizing triplet states and achieving long-lived phosphorescence.
• Evaluated SiPEMs for peroxidase, oxidase, and catalase-like activities in tumor microenvironments.

Main Results:

• SiPEMs exhibited environment-adaptive peroxidase, oxidase, and catalase-like activities.
• Achieved long-lived phosphorescence (124.5 ms) suitable for millisecond-time-resolved imaging with high signal-to-background ratios.
• SiPEMs amplified oxidative stress in tumors (136-fold enhancement) and scavenged reactive oxygen species in normal cells.

Conclusions:

• The developed SiPEMs offer a promising platform for sensitive diagnosis and targeted cancer treatment.
• SiPEMs represent a breakthrough in replacing traditional enzymes for cancer therapy applications.
• The coordination modulation strategy provides a systematic approach for creating high-performance enzyme mimics.