The blood brain barrier is the main obstacle to delivering diagnostic and therapeutic agents to the diseased sites of brain. It is still of great challenge for the combined use of focused ultrasound (FUS) and
theranostic nanotechnology to achieve noninvasive and localized delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs into orthotopic
brain tumor. In this work, a unique
theranostic nanoplatform for highly efficient photoacoustic imaging-guided
chemotherapy of
brain tumor both in vitro and in vivo, which is based on the utilization of hollow mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles (HMONs) to integrate ultrasmall Cu2-x Se particles on the surface and
doxorubicin inside the hollow interior, is synthesized. The developed multifunctional
theranostic nanosystems exhibit
tumor-triggered programmed destruction due to the reducing microenvironment-responsive cleavage of
disulfide bonds that are incorporated into the framework of HMONs and linked between HMONs and Cu2-x Se, resulting in
tumor-specific biodegradation and on-demand
drug-releasing behavior. Such tumor microenvironment-responsive biodegradable and biocompatible
theranostic nanosystems in combination with FUS provide a promising delivery nanoplatform with high performance for orthotopic
brain tumor imaging and
therapy.