Bacteria-like mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods for positron emission tomography and photoacoustic imaging-guided chemo-photothermal combined therapy

In this work, bacterial-like mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods (bGNR@MSN) were successfully synthesized and used for positron emission tomography and photoacoustic imaging-guided chemo-photothermal combined cancer therapy. The results showed bGNR@MSN(DOX)-PEG mediated chemo-photothermal combined treatment exhibited significantly enhanced therapeutic efficacy in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice due to their excellent photothermal effects, high-efficiency DOX loading, NIR-triggered DOX release capacity and high tumor accumulation (∼10 %ID/g).548