Polydopamine nanoparticles with different sizes for NIR-promoted gene delivery and synergistic photothermal therapy

The combination of photothermal therapy and gene therapy has received increasing attention in tumor treatment. However, how to improve synergistic efficacy has become a new challenge. NIR light has a great potential in tumor treatment because of its considerable penetration depth and spatiotemporal controllability. Polydopamine is a popular photothermal conversion agent, which has desirable photothermal conversion ability and good biocompatibility. In this research, polydopamine-polyethyleneimine nanoparticles with diameters of 13 nm (SPPNPs) and 236 nm (LPPNPs) were prepared as gene carriers. The size of polydopamine nanoparticles had great effect on the complexes formation, photothermal conversion ability and gene transfection efficiency. After loading gene, the SPPNPs/gene and LPPNPs/gene complexes were about 60–80 nm and 240 nm respectively, indicating different styles of complexes formation. Both SPPNPs/gene and LPPNPs/gene complexes without NIR irradiation could achieve similar gene transfection efficiency as commercial lipofectamine 2000, while with lower cytotoxicity. Due to better photothermal conversion ability, the transfection level of LPPNPs/pGL-3 complexes increased to 4.5 times after NIR irradiation (2.6 W/cm², 15 min), which ascribed to the quick escape of gene complexes from the endosome. The produced heat under NIR irradiation could also ablate tumor cells. So LPPNPs were chosen to deliver tumor suppressor gene p53 DNA to investigate the synergistic efficacy of gene/photothermal therapy. The tumor in KB tumor-bearing mice was almost eliminated after intratumoral injection, and the tumor inhibition efficacy of gene/photothermal synergistic therapy achieved to 99%. By combining NIR-promoted gene transfection and gene/photothermal synergistic therapy, the LPPNPs hold great promise in practical tumor treatment.