Controlled Au–Polymer Nanostructures for Multiphoton Imaging, Prodrug Delivery, and Chemo–Photothermal Therapy Platforms

We have successfully introduced a proton-induced controlled reaction of HAuCl4 and poly(styrene-alt-maleic acid) (PSMA) sodium salt to prepare triangular and multicore Au@polymer nanoparticles (NPs). The interparticle interactions in the core gave rise to an absorption band at the near-infrared wavelength. The near-infrared optical properties of the resulting Au-polymer nanostructures are highly stable in a physiological environment, which offered strong photo-to-thermal conversion by a moderate continuous-wave 808 nm laser and exhibited multiphoton fluorescence for imaging using a 1230 nm light excitation (femtosecond laser). Exposure of the carboxylate groups at the polymer shell made the surface structure of the Au multicore @polymer NPs directly conjugate Pt(II)-/Pt(IV)-based drugs, which possessed the elimination of the immediate toxicity over the short time and resulted in an anticancer effect after 3 days. A synergistic effect of the chemo-photothermal therapy showed a moderate hyperthermia assistance (<1 W/cm(2)) and better anticancer performance over time compared with the individual treatments. We demonstrated that such PSMA-based methodology not only enables a broad range of chemical material synthesis in the kinetic control to form Au nano-octahedrons and nanotriangles using Br(-)/I(-) ions additives but also could be extended to form Au/Fe3O4@polymer nanocomposites via proton-assisted PSMA self-assembly.