One-stepin situgrowth of MoS₂@lentinan as a dual-stimuli-responsive nanocarrier for synergistic chemo-photothermal therapy

For most cancers, multimodal cancer synergistic therapy is far more effective than monotherapy. Herein, a multifunctional nanocarrier based on lentinan (LTN)in situfunctionalized molybdenum disulfide nanoflowers (MoS₂@LTN NFs) is developed by a simple hydrothermal method together with thein situsurface modification strategy. We utilized them to load chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine (GEM) forin vitroandin vivochemo-photothermal (Chemo-PTT) therapy. The results show that MoS₂@LTN NFs have the following characteristics: (1) thein situencapsulated LTN can affect the crystal structure of MoS₂, and the light absorption capacity of MoS₂@LTN is 1.26 times higher than that of pure MoS₂; (2) it could achieve different drug release behaviors by dual stimulation with acidic pH and NIR laser irradiation; (3)in vivoexperiments demonstrated that synergistic Chemo-PTT therapy achieved by using MoS₂@LTN-GEM has a more favorable therapeutic effect than monotherapy. Accordingly, MoS₂@LTN NFs could be developed as promising nanocarriers for synergistic therapy.