Engineered, self-assembled near-infrared photothermal agents for combined tumor immunotherapy and chemo-photothermal therapy

New combination therapy strategy, which takes the advantages of co-delivery two or more therapeutic agents in one nanocarrier platform, has been widely used in the clinic and achieved immense popularity in cancer treatment. Here, we have rationally developed a multifunctional platform using a self-assembly strategy to incorporate materials with specific functions of chemotherapeutics, hyperthermia, and especially immunotherapy, which can collectively contribute to the effective cancer treatment. We design the immunomodulatory CpG ODNs based platform that is conjugated with NIR-responsive gold nanorods and doxorubicin for cancer therapy. The gold nanorods can be applied as the nanocarrier to simultaneously address the three kinds of treatments, which lead to a significant benefit relative to the use of each method alone. Both in vitro and in vivo assays reveal that this engineered vehicle exhibits significant antitumor efficacy. Our studies provide strong evidence that the AuNRs-CpG-Dox conjugates can be utilized as efficient antitumor agents. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.