Light-driven sextuple theranostics: nanomedicine involving second near-infrared AIE-active Ir(III) complex for prominent cancer treatment

Light-driven cancer theranostics has shown inexhaustible and vigorous vitality by virtue of its high efficacy, prominent controllability and noninvasiveness. Exploration of an all-round theranostic material simultaneously affording both multimodal diagnosis imaging and synergistic phototherapy would be an appealing yet significantly challenging task. Herein, a novel nanomedicine Ir@PPEG-MeEPO was ingeniously constructed by integrating beforehand ¹O₂-charged amphiphilic polymer and well-tailored Ir(III) complex IrDPTP, which was featured by second near-infrared (NIR-II) aggregation-induced emission (AIE) tendency, efficient reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, good photothermal conversion efficiency and high-performance hydrogen gas production. To the best of our knowledge, IrDPTP held the longest emission wavelength among all reported AIE Ir (III) complexes. Moreover, Ir@PPEG-MeEPO was capable of controllably releasing ROS via triggered photothermal effect upon NIR irradiation, making it well-adapted to hypoxic environment of tumor. Those distinctive characteristics of Ir@PPEG-MeEPO endowed it with unprecedented performance on sextuple theranostics comprised of NIR-II fluorescence-photoacoustic-photothermal trimodal imaging and photodynamic-photothermal-hydrogen trimodal therapy, witnessed by the precise tumor diagnosis and complete tumor elimination. The study would open up new perspectives for the exploration of superior nanomedicine for practical cancer theranostics.