One-pot Synthesis of Tumor-Microenvironment Responsive Degradable Nanoflower-Medicine for Multimodal Cancer Therapy with Reinvigorating Antitumor Immunity.

Multimodal cancer therapies show great promise in synergistically enhancing anticancer efficacy through different mechanisms. However, most current multimodal therapies either rely on complex assemblies of multiple functional nanomaterials and drug molecules, or involve the use of nanomedicines with poor in-vivo degradability/metabolizability, thus restricting their clinical translatability. Herein, we have synthesized a nanoflower-medicine using iron ions, thioguanine (TG) and tetracarboxylic porphyrin (TCPP) as building blocks through one-step hydrothermal method for combined chemo/chemodynamic/photodynamic cancer therapy. The resulted nanoflowers, consisting of low-density Fe O core and iron complex (Fe-TG and Fe-TCPP compounds) shell, exhibited high accumulation at the tumor site, desirable degradability in the TME, robust suppression of tumor growth and metastasis, as well as effective reinvigoration of host antitumor immunity. Triggered by the low pH in tumor microenvironment, the nanoflowers gradually degrade after internalization, contributing to the effective drug release and initiation of high-efficiency catalytic reactions precisely in tumor sites. Moreover, iron ions could be eliminated from the body through renal clearance after fulfilling their mission. Strikingly, we also find that the multimodal synergistic therapy effectively elicits the host antitumor immunity without inducing additional toxicity. This easy-manufactured and degradable multimodal therapeutic nanomedicine is promising for clinical precision oncology. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.