Mesoporous Silica-Coated Gold Nanorods with Designable Anchor Peptides for Chemo-Photothermal Cancer Therapy
Chen Li, Ke Feng, Nan Xie, Wenhua Zhao, Ling Ye, Bin Chen, Chen‐Ho Tung, Li‐Zhu Wu
Abstract
The incorporation of bioactive peptides often creates unprecedented opportunities in design of hierarchical nanocomposites. In this contribution we employed mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods (AuNR@SiO2) as a theranostic platform for synergistic chemo-photothermal cancer therapy. Utilizing an in situ grafting–cleavage strategy, the cell penetrating TAT peptide (YGRKKRRQRRR) could be covalently grafted onto the silica surface of AuNR@SiO2 nanocomposites and in situ activated by standard cleavage treatment to afford AuNR@SiO2-TAT drug nanocarriers directly. FT-IR spectroscopies and sharp polarity changes evidenced the effectiveness of these peptide modification procedures. As expected, TAT-modified drug nanocarriers exhibited significant enhancement in intracellular uptake and acidic endolysosome internalization, as well as passive tumor accumulation. Upon triggering of the NIR irradiation, AuNR@SiO2-TAT/DOX drug aggregates displayed photothermal-controlled drug release and synergistic efficacy on inhibiting the growth of tumors in vivo. More importantly, the in situ grafting–cleavage strategy also provided a simple and versatile pathway to tether bioactive peptides on an interface to fabricate complicated nanohybrids for multipurpose biomedical applications.