In recent years, multifunctional bio-nanomaterials applied as
theranostic agents in
cancer diagnosis and
therapy have attracted great attention due to their powerful functionality. Here, for the first time, we develop a novel
theranostic agent based on porous
bismuth (pBi)
nanospheres for
tumor imaging and combined
chemotherapy,
photothermal therapy (PTT) and
radiotherapy (RT). The pBi
nanospheres have good biocompatibility due to a
polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) coating, and have a high photothermal conversion efficiency (η = 48.5%) for PTT. The pBi
nanospheres could be used as a radiosensitizer to trigger X-ray deposition and acted as an excellent computed tomography (CT) imaging
contrast agent owing to the Bi content. The pBi
nanospheres can also be used as a carrier for drug delivery due to their porous structures. Moreover, the thermal effect of the as-produced PTT substantially enhanced the release of
doxorubicin (DOX) for
chemotherapy, resulting in a synergistic
therapeutic effect for complete
tumor removal. Meanwhile, treatment with pBi/DOX
nanospheres caused no obvious toxicity. Therefore, these multi-functional pBi
nanospheres, fabricated by a unique method, have a great promise for application in CT imaging-guided synergetic
cancer therapy.