Porphyrin-based Nanosonosensitizers Combined with Targeting Peptides for Sonodynamic Therapy of Glioma

Traditional cancer treatments have disadvantages of large trauma area and toxic side effects while killing cancer cells. Peptide-targeted sonodynamic therapy (SDT) can effectively improve specificity of cancer treatment and overcome the problem of low tissue penetration depth caused by a photo-driven therapy. Herein, we developed a porphyrin-based sonosensitizer with a water-soluble polymer as a biological carrier and a cRGD peptide for tumor targeting, which constituted a nano sonosensitizer (T-cRGD NPs) for fluorescence imaging-guided sonodynamic therapy. A comparable sonosensitizer (T-PEG NPs) without the targeting unit was also prepared for illustration of therapeutic performance. Attribute to the role of peptide targeting, T-cRGD NPs can accumulate and enter tumor cells for fluorescence imaging and show a superior SDT effect than T-PEG NPsin vitro. The imaging in vivo reveals that T-cRGD NPs can enrich in tumor tissues within 14 h with a good biocompatibility.