Progress in natural biomolecule assembly and photodynamic therapy of tumor

Photodynamic therapy of tumor is a new technology which uses photodynamic effect to treat tumor Its basic principle is to excite the photosensitizer absorbed by tumor tissue by laser irradiation of specific wavelength The photosensitizer in excited state transfers energy to nearby oxygen molecules to generate active oxygen (including singlet oxygen, superoxide anion or hydroxyl radical, etc.), and further reacts with adjacent biological macromolecules, producing cytotoxicity and causing cell death Compared with traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, photodynamic therapy has the advantages of high accuracy and small side effects At present, the development of biomolecular materials with both optical waveguide and photosensitive properties is of great significance for photodynamic therapy of tumor at the single cell level, but also faces great challenges With the support of NSFC and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li junbai, the Key Laboratory of colloid, interface and chemical thermodynamics, Institute of chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has long been committed to the research of biomolecule controllable assembly and photodynamic therapy of tumor, and made a series of progress (ACS Nano 2012, 68030; adv funct Mater 2016, 262561; angel Chem Int ed 2016， 55， 13538；Angew Chem Int Ed 2018， 57， 7759）。 In recent years, they have assembled a series of nano biomaterials camouflaged by red blood cell membrane using the strategy of "taking it from the body and using it in the body" Through the idea of "immune deception", they evaded the recognition and elimination of the immune system, and realized highly selective photodynamic therapy of tumor (Natl SCI Rev., 2019, DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz037; angel Chem Int ed 2018, 57, 6049) Recently, the team has made large-scale single crystal nanorods of natural biological small molecule vitamin B2 through molecular assembly It is found that the nanorods have the properties of optical waveguide and active oxygen after photosensitization By integrating the above two properties, vitamin B2 nanorods can be used for high-efficiency photodynamic therapy of tumor at the single cell level under remote local light irradiation They cooperated with Gao Fuping, associate researcher of Institute of high energy physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to carry out systematic photodynamic therapy of living tumor in mice with melanoma as model This work provides a new way for the accurate photodynamic therapy of tumor based on natural photo active biomolecular assembly Relevant research results were published in angew Chem Int ed 2019, 587254-7258.