Nitrogen-doped carbon nanodots deposited on titania nanoparticles: Unconventional near-infrared active photocatalysts for cancer therapy
Ainhoa Madrid, Ana Martín-Pardillos, Javier Bonet‐Aleta, María Sancho‐Albero, Gema Martı́nez, Javier Calzada-Funes, Pilar Martín‐Duque, Jesús Santamarı́a, José L. Hueso
Abstract
Cancer represents a major public health issue and a primary cause of death for the mankind and the search for alternative cancer treatments that assist or alleviate the drawbacks of current cancer therapies remains imperative. Nanocatalytic medicine represents a new discipline that aims at exploiting the unique response of heterogeneous catalysts exposed to unconventional conditions such as those encountered in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Photo-triggered cancer therapies using light-activable catalytic materiales can stimulate and activate multiple biological processes and represent a very promising field of study. Herein, we evaluate the use of carbon nanodots with different composition (CNDs) retrieved by laser pyrolysis as potential near-infrared (NIR) photosensitizers able to activate P25 semiconductor nanostructured photocatalysts. We describe the enhanced photocatalytic response towards glucose conversion and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation upon irradiation with NIR-LEDs when CNDs doped with heteroatoms were tested. The most active photocatalysts were evaluated in the presence of cancer cells and revealed a promising photodynamic effect under NIR irradiation. This work represents one of the scarce examples of a conventional inorganic photocatalyst containing TiO2 that is translated into a biomedical application with a successful outcome.