A Novel Yolk-Shell Fe 3 O 4 @ Mesoporous Carbon Nanoparticle as an Effective Tumor-Targeting Nanocarrier for Improvement of Chemotherapy and Photothermal Therapy.

Owing to their good stability and high photothermal conversion efficiency, the development of carbon-based nanoparticles has been intensively investigated, while the limitation of unsatisfactory cellular internalization impedes their further clinical application. Herein, we report a novel strategy for fabrication of Fe 3 O 4 yolk-shell mesoporous carbon nanocarriers (Fe 3 O 4 @hmC) with monodispersity and uniform size, which presented significantly higher cell membrane adsorption and cellular uptake properties in comparison with common solid silica-supported mesoporous carbon nanoparticles with core-shell structure. Moreover, the MRI performance of this novel Fe-based nanoparticle could facilitate precise tumor diagnosis. More importantly, after DOX loading (Fe 3 O 4 @hmC-DOX), owing to synergistic effect of chemo-phototherapy, this therapeutic agent exhibited predominant tumor cell ablation capability under 808 nm NIR laser irradiation, both in vitro and in vivo. Our work has laid a solid foundation for therapeutics with hollowed carbon shell for solid tumor diagnosis and therapy in clinical trials.