ROS-Responsive Blended Nanoparticles: Cascade-Amplifying Synergistic Effects of Sonochemotherapy with On-demand Boosted Drug Release During SDT Process

Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) not only has greater tissue-penetrating depth compared to photo-stimulated therapies, but also can also trigger rapid drug release to achieve synergistic sonochemotherapy. Here, reactive oxygen species (ROS)-responsive IR780/PTL- nanoparticles (NPs) are designed by self-assembly, which contain ROS-cleavable thioketal linkers (TL) to promote paclitaxel (PTX) release during SDT. Under ultrasound (US) stimulation, IR780/PTL-NPs produce high amounts of ROS, which not only induces apoptosis in human glioma (U87) cells but also boosts PTX released by decomposing the ROS-sensitive TL. In the U87 tumor-bearing mouse model, the IR780/PTL-NPs releases the drug at the target sites in a controlled manner upon US irradiation, which significantly inhibits tumor growth and induces apoptosis in the tumor tissues with no obvious toxicity. Taken together, the IR780/PTL-NPs are a novel platform for sonochemotherapy, and can control the spatio-temporal release of chemotherapeutic drugs during SDT.