文摘
Recently, photothermal therapy (PTT) that utilizes photothermal conversion (PTC) agents to ablate cancer under near-infrared (NIR) irradiation has attracted a growing amount of attention because of its excellent therapeutic efficacy and improved target selectivity. Therefore, exploring novel PTC agents with an outstanding photothermal effect is a current research focus. Herein, we reported a polydopamine-coated magnetic composite particle with an enhanced PTC effect, which was synthesized simply through coating polydopamine (PDA) on the surface of magnetic Fe<sub>3sub>O<sub>4sub> particles. Compared with magnetic Fe<sub>3sub>O<sub>4sub> particles and PDA nanospheres, the core鈥搒hell nanomaterials exhibited an increased NIR absorption, and thus, an enhanced photothermal effect was obtained. We demonstrated the in vitro and in vivo effects of the photothermal therapy using our composite particles and their ability as a contrast agent in the T<sub>2sub>-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. These results indicated that the multifunctional composite particles with enhanced photothermal effect are superior to magnetic Fe<sub>3sub>O<sub>4sub> particles and PDA nanospheres alone.