A facile fabrication of silk/MoS2 hybrids for Photothermal therapy

- A one-step way is used to prepare RSF-MoS2 hybrids, avoiding the complicated chemical process to exfoliate MoS2 nanosheets.
- RSF nanofibrils are formed on the surfaces of the MoS2 flakes by silk protein self-assembly.
- RSF/MoS2 hybrids with low RSF content exhibit enhanced photothermal effect compared with the pristine MoS2 dispersion.
- RSF/MoS2 hybrids show better biocompatibility than pristine MoS2 due to the protein nature of silk fibroin.
- RSF/MoS2 hybrids can ablate cancer cells effectively, showing potential in photothermal therapy for cancer treatment.

Photothermal therapy, due to its safety and effectiveness, has attracted tremendous interest in the area of cancer treatment in recent few decades. The emerging of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides has provided this promising therapy with a novel genus of nanomaterials. Herein, we present a facile one-step way to prepare a hybrid of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanosheets simply by directly adding MoS2 dispersion into RSF aqueous solution to induce the self-assembly of silk protein on the surface of MoS2 flakes. The produced RSF/MoS2 hybrids demonstrate better photothermal performance and less cytotoxicity than the pristine MoS2. In the meantime, the RSF/MoS2 hybrids show a good photothermal stability. Finally and importantly, the RSF/MoS2 hybrids display a satisfying photothermal capability on ablating HeLa cells in vitro, which imply that such a protein/inorganic hybrid material holds a great promise as a photothermal agent in future cancer treatment.

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