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Breast cancer, as the common malignant carcinoma in women, seriously reduces the life quality and increases mortality of female worldwide. Fortunately, insufficient chemotherapy with external photothermal therapy could remarkably improve the therapeutic efficiency of breast cancer. In this work, we proposed a polydopamine (PDA) and tetrasulfide bond co-doped hollowed mesoporous silica nanospheres with Dox loading and surface hyaluronic acid coating for drug leakage avoidance (PhMSON@Dox-HA). After intravenously injected into tumor bearing-mice, this therapeutic agent could effectively target to the tumor site owing to the HA modification. The biocompatible property and GSH-induced decomposition capability endows the precise release of drugs in the cytoplasm of tumor cells. Meanwhile, PDA facilitated the efficient photothermal therapy under 808 nm laser irradiation. Therefore, the synergistic effect of chemo-photothermal therapy possessed most effective tumor eradication ability. Our work exploits the design approach of biocompatible and degradable drug delivery nanocarriers and sheds bright light on the chemotherapy and photothermal therapy combination for the malignant tumor elimination.

CeO2-based nanoenzymes present a very promising paradigm in cancerous therapy, as H2O2 can be effectively decomposed under the electron transmit between Ce3+ and Ce4+. However, the limitations of endogenous H2O2 and intracellular low Fenton-like reaction rate lead to single unsatisfied chemodynamic therapy (CDT) efficacy. Other therapeutic modalities combined with chemodynamic therapy are generally used to enhance the tumor eradiation efficacy. Here, we have synthesized a novel hollow pH-sensitive CeO2 nanoenzyme after a cavity is loaded with indocyanine green (ICG), as well as with surface modification of tumor targeting peptides, Arg-Gly-Asp (denoted as HCeO2@ICG-RGD), to successfully target tumor cells via αvβ3 recognition. Importantly, in comparison with single chemodynamic therapy, a large amount of reactive oxygen species in cytoplasm were induced by enhanced chemodynamic therapy with photothermal therapy (PTT). Furthermore, tumor cells were efficiently killed by a combination of photothermal and chemodynamic therapy, revealing that synergistic therapy was successfully constructed. This is mainly due to the precise delivery of ICG and release after HCeO2 decomposition in cytoplasm, in which effective hyperthermia generation was found under 808 nm laser irradiation. Meanwhile, our HCeO2@ICG-RGD can act as a fluorescent imaging contrast agent for an evaluation of tumor tissue targeting capability in vivo. Finally, we found that almost all tumors in HCeO2@ICG-RGD+laser groups were completely eradicated in breast cancer bearing mice, further proving the effective synergistic effect in vivo. Therefore, our novel CeO2-based PTT agents provide a proof-of-concept argumentation of tumor-precise multi-mode therapies in preclinical applications.