Light-triggered plasmonic vesicles with enhanced catalytic activity of glucose oxidase for programmable photothermal/starvation therapy

Glucose oxidase (GOx)-based nanotheranostic agents hold great promise in tumor starvation and its synergistic therapy. Self-assembled plasmonic gold vesicles (GVs) with unique optical properties, large hollow cavity, and strong localized surface plasmon resonance, can be used as multi-functional nanocarriers for synergistic therapy. Herein, GOx-loaded GVs (GV-GOx) were developed for light-triggered GOx release as well as enhanced catalytic activity of GOx, achieving programmable photothermal/starvation therapy. Under near-infrared laser irradiation, the GV-GOx generated strong localized hyperthermia due to plasmon coupling effect of GVs, promoting the release of encapsulated GOx and increasing its catalytic activity, resulting in enhanced tumor starvation effect. In addition, the high photothermal effect improved the cellular uptake of GV-GOx and allowed an efficient monitoring of synergistic tumor treatment via photoacoustic/photothermal duplex imaging in vivo. Impressively, the synergistic photothermal/starvation therapy demonstrated complete tumor eradication in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice, verifying superior synergistic anti-tumor therapeutic effects than monotherapy with no apparent systemic side effects. Our work demonstrated the development of a light-triggered nanoplatform for cancer synergistic therapy.