AIEgen-Based Polymer Nanocomposites for Imaging-Guided Photothermal Therapy

Photothermal therapy (PTT) has emerged as one of the most promising cancer therapeutic tools owing to its advantages of minimal invasiveness, convenient operation, and low toxicity. Imaging techniques are usually integrated in PTT to visualize the accurate location of tumor and monitor the real-time accumulation process of photothermal agents in tumors. Polymer nanocomposites based on aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) have shown great potential in imaging-guided PTT for cancer theranostics. Their excellent photostability and bright aggregate-state fluorescence can facilitate the imaging process and greatly enhance the imaging quality. Moreover, well-tailored AIEgens could possess high photothermal conversion efficiency, which makes them promising PTT agents to be used in bioapplications. The high photothermal conversion effect also endows AIEgen-based polymer nanocomposites with additive functions of photoacoustic and photothermal imaging. Their versatile imaging functions can not only provide insightful information about the location of tumor but also guide PTT in real time to enhance therapeutic efficiency and reduce side effects. In this Review, we will introduce the photothermal conversion mechanism of AIEgens and summarize the recent progress in AIEgen-based polymer nanocomposites for imaging-guided PTT. We hope this review could stimulate more interesting work to advance the research on imaging-guided PTT.