Photosensitizer-singlet oxygen sensor conjugated silica nanoparticles for photodynamic therapy and bioimaging.

Intracellular singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ) generation and detection help optimize the outcome of photodynamic therapy (PDT). Theranostics programmed for on-demand phototriggered 1 O 2 release and bioimaging have great potential to transform PDT. We demonstrate an ultrasensitive fluorescence turn-on sensor-sensitizer-RGD peptide-silica nanoarchitecture and its 1 O 2 generation-releasing-storing-sensing properties at the single-particle level or in living cells. The sensor and sensitizer in the nanoarchitecture are an aminomethyl anthracene (AMA)-coumarin dyad and a porphyrin or CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs), respectively. The AMA in the dyad quantitatively quenches the fluorescence of coumarin by intramolecular electron transfer, the porphyrin or QD moiety generates 1 O 2, and the RGD peptide facilitates intracellular delivery. The small size, below 200 nm, as verified by scanning electron microscopy and differential light scattering measurements, of the architecture within the 1 O 2 diffusion length enables fast and efficient intracellular fluorescence switching by the tandem ultraviolet (UV)-visible or visible-near-infrared (NIR) photo-triggering. While the red emission and 1 O 2 generation by the porphyrin are continually turned on, the blue emission of coumarin is uncaged into 230-fold intensity enhancement by on-demand photo-triggering. The 1 O 2 production and release by the nanoarchitecture enable spectro-temporally controlled cell imaging and apoptotic cell death; the latter is verified from cytotoxic data under dark and phototriggering conditions. Furthermore, the bioimaging potential of the TCPP-based nanoarchitecture is examined in vivo in B6 mice.