Regulating Aggregation‐Induced Emission Luminogen for Multimodal Imaging‐Navigated Synergistic Therapy Involving Anti‐Angiogenesis

Abstract

Abstract As a new avenue for cancer research, phototheranostics has shown inexhaustible and vigorous vitality as it permits real‐time diagnosis and concurrent in situ therapy upon non‐invasive light‐initiation. However, construction of an advanced material, allowing prominent phototheranostic outputs and synchronously surmounting the inherent deficiency of phototheranostics, would be an appealing yet significantly challenging task. Herein, an aggregation‐induced emission (AIE)‐active luminogen (namely DBD‐TM) featured by intensive electron donor‐acceptor strength and twisted architecture with finely modulated intramolecular motion, is tactfully designed and prepared. DBD‐TM simultaneously possessed fluorescence emission in the second near‐infrared (NIR‐II) region and high‐efficiency photothermal conversion. By integrating DBD‐TM with anti‐angiogenic agent sorafenib, a versatile nanomaterial is smoothly fabricated and utilized for trimodal imaging‐navigated synergistic therapy involving photothermal therapy and anti‐angiogenesis toward cancer. This advanced approach is capable of affording accurate tumor diagnosis, complete tumor elimination, and largely restrained tumor recurrence, evidently denoting a prominent theranostic formula beyond phototheranostics. This study will offer a blueprint for exploiting a new generation of cancer theranostics.

Keywords

• aggregation‐induced emission
• anti‐angiogenesis
• multimodal phototheranostics
• NIR‐II FLI