Photoresponsive Hydrogel‐Coated Upconversion Cyanobacteria Nanocapsules for Myocardial Infarction Prevention and Treatment

Abstract

Abstract Myocardial infarction (MI) is a common disease that seriously threatens human health. It is noteworthy that oxygen is one of the key factors in the regulation of MI pathology procession: the controllable hypoxic microenvironment can enhance the tolerance of cardiac myocytes (CMs) and oxygen therapy regulates the immune microenvironment to repair the myocardial injury. Thus, the development of an oxygen‐controllable treatment is critically important to unify MI prevention and timely treatment. Here, a hydrogel encapsulated upconversion cyanobacterium nanocapsule for both MI prevention and treatment is successfully synthesized. The engineered cyanobacteria can consume oxygen via respiration to generate a hypoxic microenvironment, resulting in the upregulation of heat shock protein70 (HSP70), which can enhance the tolerance of CMs for MI. When necessary, under 980 nm near‐infrared (NIR) irradiation, the system releases photosynthetic oxygen through upconversion luminescence (UCL) to inhibit macrophage M1 polarization, and downregulates pro‐inflammatory cytokines IL‐6 and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α), thereby repairing myocardial injury. To sum up, a photoresponsive upconversion cyanobacterium nanocapsule is developed, which can achieve MI prevention and treatment for only one injection via NIR‐defined respiration and photosynthesis.

Keywords

• cyanobacteria
• myocardial infarction
• oxygen
• photoresponse