"Rigid-Flexible" Dual-Ferrocene Chimeric Nanonetwork for Simultaneous Tumor-Targeted Tracing and...

There is an urgent need to develop phototherapeutic agents with imaging capabilities to assess the treatment process and efficacy in real-time during cancer phototherapy for precision cancer therapy. The safe near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent dyes have garnered significant attention and are desirable for theranostics agents. However, until now, achieving excellent photostability and fluorescence (FL) imaging capability in aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) dyes remains a big challenge. Here, for the only FDA-approved NIR dye, indocyanine green (ICG), we developed a dual-ferrocene (Fc) chimeric nanonetwork ICG@HFFC based on the rigid-flexible strategy through one-step self-assembly, which uses rigid Fc-modified hyaluronic acid (HA) copolymer (HA-Fc) and flexible octadecylamine (ODA) bonded Fc (Fc-C₁₈) as the delivery system. HA-Fc reserved the ability of HA to target the CD44 receptor of the tumor cell surface, and the dual-Fc region provided a rigid space for securely binding ICG through metal-ligand interaction and π-π conjugation, ensuring excellent photostability. Additionally, the alkyl chain provided flexible confinement for the remaining ICG through hydrophobic forces, preserving its FL. Thereby, a balance is achieved between outstanding photostability and FL imaging capability. In vitro studies showed improved photobleaching resistance, enhanced FL stability, and increased singlet oxygen (¹O₂) production efficiency in ICG@HFFC. Further in vivo results display that ICG@HFFC had good tumor tracing ability and significant tumor inhibition which also exhibited good biocompatibility.. Therefore, ICG@HFFC provides an encouraging strategy to realize simultaneous enhanced tumor tracing and photothermal/photodynamic therapy (PTT/PDT) and offers a novel approach to address the limitations of ACQ dyes.