A magnetic polypyrrole/iron oxide core/gold shell nanocomposite for multimodal imaging and photothermal cancer therapy

For the purpose of improving the diagnosis and enhancing the photothermal therapeutic effect for cancer under near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation, a novel magnetic therapeutic platform containing dual photothermal agents, polypyrrole (PPy) and gold nanoshell, is constructed. The nanostructure is composed of a magnetic PPy/Fe3O4-core and a gold nanoshell, which is capable of enhancing the contrast for both magnetic resonance (MR) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) imaging. By attaching Raman probes onto the surface of gold shell, the nanocomposites exhibit the potential to serve as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active substrates for optical modality identification of cancer cell. The capability of the therapeutic nanoplatform as photothermal agent is further demonstrated by effective ablation of cancer cells upon exposure to NIR laser at 808 nm, which is highly promising for multimodal imaging-guided cancer treatment.