Engineering of Gold Nanorods as Multifunctional Theranostic Agent for Photothermal-Enhanced Radiotherapy of Cervical Cancer

Abstract Radiotherapy (RT) is an important method in the treatment of cervical cancer. Devising exceedingly effective, conveniently synthesizable, and lowly poisonous smart multifunctional radiosensitizers is of tremendous significance to improve the cure rate of RT. Gold nanorods (GNRs), which exhibited dramatic X-ray absorption and near-infrared (NIR) photothermal conversion effectiveness, could be utilized as radiosensitizers. In the present study, an all-in-one theranostic nanoagent for photothermal-enhanced radiotherapy of carcinoma was devised based on GNRs with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) attributes (NPAPF-GNRs@PEG). NPAPF-GNRs@PEG-mediated PTT-RT demonstrated excellent radiation sensitization effect by significantly inhibiting invasion and migration, increasing ROS and causing more DNA damage in two different pathological types of cell lines of cervical cancer. Experiments of in vitro and in vivo and metabolomics study demonstrated that PTT-RT based on NPAPF-GNRs@PEG showed enhanced RT effect by increasing apoptosis, compared to RT alone. Meanwhile, the NPAPF-GNRs@PEG nanoagent exhibited excellent tomography imaging (CTI)/photoacoustic imaging (PAI)/fluorescence imaging (FLI)/photothermal imaging (PTI) multi-modal imaging in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, the present study provides an innovative multifunctional platform for optimizing the curative efficacy of precision RT and further enriches the theoretical basis of the mechanistic study of radio-sensitization by GNRs-mediated PTT-RT.