A Polydopamine-Modified DNA Origami Nanosystem for Photothermal-Chemical Combined Cancer Therapy

Polydopamine is a synthetic polymer material with an excellent near-infrared spectral absorption capacity and photothermal conversion efficiency, which is widely used in the field of photothermal therapy for malignant tumors. However, due to the uncontrollable self-polymerization defect of dopamine, polydopamine is often completely wrapped on the surface of nanomaterials, resulting in the loss of further modification function of nanomaterials. DNA origami has excellent programmability and good addressability, providing a programmable platform for the fine fabrication of various nanomaterials. In this work, we attempt to use DNA origami technology to controllably fabricate polydopamine nanomaterials with specific morphologies to preserve the site-specific modification function of DNA origami and verify the function by intercalating Dox into DNA origami. Subsequently, this study uses DNA origami to deliver polydopamine and Dox to further explore the application value of the DNA origami composite vector in the field of cancer treatment. The experiments confirm the development of a multifunctional nanocarrier based on photothermal-chemical combined treatment function, which provides us with a therapeutic strategy to effectively kill tumor cells using DNA nanostructures and is expected to further promote the application of DNA origami in the field of nanomedicine.