Magnetically amplified photothermal therapies and multimodal imaging with magneto-plasmonic nanodomes

Nanotherapies require new ways for controlling and improving the delivery of the therapeutic agents to the site of action to maximize their efficacy and minimize the side effects. This control is particularly relevant in photothermal treatments to reduce the required light intensity and amount of injected nanoparticles, and to minimize necrotic cell deaths. Here we present a novel concept for multifunctional nanobiomedical agents: magneto-plasmonic (MP) nanodomes for magnetically guided and amplified photothermal therapies and as contrast agents for multimodal imaging. The MP nanodomes are composed of a Fe/Au bilayer semi-shell deposited on a 100 nm diameter fluorescent polystyrene nanosphere, which gather a unique combination of straightforward functionalization, high colloidal stability, very strong ferromagnetic behavior and intense optical absorption efficiency in the near infrared. We show that the photothermal conversion efficiency of the Fe/Au nanodomes with high Fe ratios is substantially larger than pure plasmonic Au nanodomes and the state-of-art plasmonic nanoheaters, i.e. Au nanorods and nanoshells, by merging strong optical absorption, minimized scattering and low optical anisotropy. Remarkably, the effective magnetophoretic concentration of the Fe/Au nanodomes at the illumination region enables large local increase of the optically induced temperature rise. The Fe semishell also provides very intense T2 contrast in nuclear magnetic resonance, which is at least 15-fold larger per particle than commercial iron oxide contrast agents. Moreover, the fluorescent polystyrene nanosphere and the Au semishell integrate valuable fluorescent and X-ray contrasts, respectively, which we have used to assess the nanodomes internalization by cancer cells. The MP nanodomes are nontoxic to cells even in the case of magnetophoretic local enrichment with initially high particle concentration (100 μg/mL). Remarkably, we demonstrate amplified local photothermal treatments by the magnetic enrichment of the nanodomes at the illumination region, which enables reaching nearly 100% reduction of cell viability with low particle concentration (10 μg/mL) and mild NIR laser intensity (5 W/cm2). These results highlight the high potential of MP nanodomes for magnetically guided and amplified photothermal therapies.