One-step synthesis of multifunctional nanoparticles for CT/PA imaging guided breast cancer photothermal therapy

Construction of multifunctional LC@I-PANi nanoplatform for CT/PA imaging-guided photothermal therapy. [Display omitted] •A facile one-step strategy was used to synthesize LC@I-PANi nanoparticles.•The introduction of iodine endows nanoparticles with CT contrast performance.•The diameter of LC@I-PANi nanoparticles could be controlled byl-cysteine (LC).•The molar ratio of HIO3 and aniline affected the photothermal ability of LC@-PANi.•The LC@I-PANi can achieve appealing dual imaging-guided photothermal therapy. Advances in nanotheranostics have promoted the development of precision medicine, which has great potential as a weapon for clinical diagnosis and therapy of tumors. However, the combination of three functional principle components (imaging probes, therapeutic agents and surface coating) in traditional theranostic system is difficult to be achieved in only one step, while undergoing multiple synthesis procedures, time-consuming process and unknown toxicity. Herein, we fabricated iodinated polyaniline (LC@I-PANi) nanoparticles via a facile one-step synthesis approach integrating chemical oxidative polymerization and iodine-doping process for computed tomography (CT) imaging and photoacoustic (PA) imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT). Iodic acid (HIO3) as an oxidant induces chemical oxidation polymerization of aniline monomers. Meanwhile, iodine is incorporated into the polyaniline structural units in the process of polymerization to obtain LC@I-PANi nanoparticles. Moreover, thel-cysteine (LC) has an effect on diameter of LC@I-PANi nanoparticles, which enables nanoparticles have size-controlled spherical morphology and good colloidal stability. The hemolysis assay and cytotoxicity assessment verified the good biocompatibility of LC@I-PANi. Moreover, our LC@I-PANi nanoparticles could not only exhibit appealing PTT efficiency, but also achieve excellent CT/PA dual-mode imaging effect. The histological evaluations suggested the negligible toxicity of LC@I-PANi in vivo. This is the first time to our knowledge that multifunctional LC@I-PANi nanoparticles were prepared by an ingenious one-step method. This work not only highlights a one-step strategy that simplified the complex synthesis of LC@I-PANi nanoparticles, but also provides insight for further biomedical application of “all-in-one” theranostic agent.