Abstract

Simple SummaryMultimodal imaging systems with high registration accuracy and molecular agents with highly specific targeting capacity are vital for imaging-guided theranostics of cancer. A novel simultaneous dual-modal imaging system combined with cancer cell membrane-coated nanoparticles as an imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT) was reported in this paper. A novel detector with the ability to detect both high-energy X-ray and low-energy visible light at the same time, as well as a dual-modal imaging system based on the detector, was developed for intrinsic simultaneous dual-modal imaging. Cancer cell membrane-coated upconversion nanoparticles (CC-UCNPs) and gold nanoparticles (CC-AuNPs) with the capacity for immune evasion and active tumor targeting were engineered for highly specific imaging and high-efficiency PTT therapy. The highly specific imaging-guided PTT efficacy was evaluated both in vitro and in vivo. All these results suggested our biomimetic UCNP/AuNP and novel simultaneous dual-modal imaging combination could be a promising platform and methodology for cancer theranostics.AbstractMultimodal imaging-guided near-infrared (NIR) photothermal therapy (PTT) is an interesting and promising cancer theranostic method. However, most of the multimodal imaging systems provide structural and functional information used for imaging guidance separately by directly combining independent imaging systems with different detectors, and many problems arise when trying to fuse different modal images that are serially taken by inviting extra markers or image fusion algorithms. Further, most imaging and therapeutic agents passively target tumors through the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, which leads to low utilization efficiency. To address these problems and systematically improve the performance of the imaging-guided PTT methodology, we report a novel simultaneous dual-modal imaging system combined with cancer cell membrane-coated nanoparticles as