Complete destruction of deep-tissue buried tumors via combination of gene silencing and gold nanoechinus-mediated photodynamic therapy

Cancer is one of the major diseases leading to human deaths. Complete destruction of deep tissue-buried tumors using non-invasive therapies is a grand challenge in clinical cancer treatments. Many therapeutic modalities were developed to tackle this problem, but only partial tumor suppression or delay growths were usually achieved. In this study, we report for the first time that complete destruction of deep tissue-buried tumors can be achieved by combination of gold nanoechinus (Au NEs)-mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) and gene silencing under ultra-low doses of near infra-red (NIR) light irradiation (915 nm, 340 mW/cm2; 1064 nm, 420 mW/cm2) in the first and second biological windows. The average lifespan of the mice treated by the above combined therapy is beyond 40 days, which are ∼2.6 times longer than that (15 days) observed from the anticancer drug doxorubicin-treated group. The current study points out a new direction for the therapeutic design to treat deeply seated tumors in future cancer treatments.