LyP-1 peptide-functionalized gold nanoprisms for SERRS imaging and tumor growth suppressing by PTT induced-hyperthermia

Gold-based nanomaterials with plasmonic properties exhibit various potentials for biomedical applications. In this work, gold nanoprisms (GNPs) was synthesized and then modified with LyP-1, a tumor-homing peptide, to improve the affinity of the GNPs to tumor cells, thus, to improve the efficacy of tumor-targeted photothermal therapy. The introduction of NIR dye 1R780 not only enabled the GNPs-based nanosystem with the surface-enhanced resonant Raman scattering (SERRS) property, but also enhanced the plasmonic photothermal property which delivering therapeutic heating by 660 nm laser irradiation. The obtained GNPs/IR780-LyP-1 presented significantly increased of photothermal conversion in vitro and in vivo, which resulted in enhanced tumor-targeting photothermal therapeutic efficacy after laser irradiation. Hence, the GNPs/IR780-LyP-1 prepared in this study can be served as a Raman-encoded molecular imaging candidate and photothermal therapy agents for future cancer treatment. (C) 2019 Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.