Incorporating multiple imaging modalities and simultaneous therapeutic functions together into one single nano-formulation is of great importance for developing high-performance clinical-translatable
theranostic agents. Herein, we fabricated multifunctional
lipid-
micelles incorporated with semiconducting
polymer dots and a
photosensitizer (referred as Pdots/Ce6@
lipid-
Gd-DOTA micelles) for combined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/photoacoustic imaging (PAI) and photodynamic (
PDT)/photothermal (PTT) dual-modal
therapy that induced by a single
laser to achieve enhanced
cancer therapeutic efficiency. The Pdots/Ce6@
lipid-
Gd-DOTA micelles with excellent water dispersibility were comprised of a core with poly[2,6-(4,4-bis-(2-ethylhexyl)-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b;3,4-b']-dithiophene)-alt-4,7-(2,1,3-benzo-
thiadiazole)] dots (Pdots) and Ce6 molecules inside, and a
lipid-PEG outlayer conjugated with gadolinium-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic
acid. The prepared Pdots/Ce6@
lipid-
Gd-DOTA micelles exhibited extremely low cytotoxicity, and had excellent MR- and PA-imaging contrast-enhancement ability, which could synchronously offer anatomical information and morphological information of
tumors. Moreover, both Pdots and Ce6
photosensitizer, encapsulated inside the
lipid-
Gd-DOTA micelles, exhibited high NIR absorption at 670 nm and were applied to combine photothermal and
photodynamic therapy simultaneously to achieve enhanced synergistic
cancer therapeutic efficiency both in vitro and in vivo. In summary, our studies demonstrated that Pdots/Ce6@
lipid-
Gd-DOTA micelles with multi-diagnosis modalities and simultaneous dual-modal photo-
therapy functions might be a potential interesting
theranostic platform for
tumor treatment.