Tumor cells can be selectively killed by heat application based on the different tolerances of normal cells and
tumor cells to temperature. However, the limited clinical application of
photothermal therapy (PTT) is mainly due to various practical implementation difficulties, of which the most important is how to fully heat the
tumor. The combination of PTT and
chemotherapy can synergistically enhance cell membrane permeability and reduce the dose of
chemotherapy drugs to not only effectively kill the
tumor but also reduce the damage to normal tissues. It is of great significance to develop materials that can be simultaneously used for
tumor PTT and
chemotherapy. Therefore, in this study, a functionalized
tellurium (Te) nanosystem (DOX/PEI@TeNPs) was prepared to achieve chemo-photothermal
cancer combination
therapy. Our research showed that the DOX/PEI@TeNP morphology was controllable, and it had good photothermal conversion efficiency and light stability. Moreover, DOX/PEI@TeNPs containing
doxorubicin (DOX) showed almost no drug release in normal tissues and neutral-pH environments, while in
tumor cells and tissues, it massively released DOX to kill
cancer cells. The as-synthesized DOX/PEI@TeNP system can produce
reactive oxygen species (ROS) under near-infrared (NIR) light irradiation and features a high photothermal conversion efficiency due to its strong NIR absorbance. Therefore, this study provides an effective strategy for the effective design of nano-drugs, which can be used for the accurate chemical-photothermal synergistic
therapy of
tumors.