Cancer remains a serious threat to human health owing to the lack of effective treatments. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has emerged as a promising non-invasive cancer treatment that consists of three main elements: photosensitizers (PSs), light and oxygen. However, some traditional PSs are prone to aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ), leading to reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation capacity. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-PSs, due to their distorted structure, suppress the strong molecular interactions, making them more photosensitive in the aggregated state instead. Activated by light, they can efficiently produce ROS and induce cell death. PS is one of the core factors of efficient PDT, so proceeding from the design and preparation of AIE-PSs, including how to manipulate the electron donor (D) and receptor (A) in the PSs configuration, introduce heavy atoms or metal complexes, design of Type I AIE-PSs, polymerization-enhanced photosensitization and nano-engineering approaches. Then, the preclinical experiments of AIE-PSs in treating different types of tumors, such as ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, and its great potential clinical applications are discussed. In addition, some perspectives on the further development of AIE-PSs are presented. This review hopes to stimulate the interest of researchers in different fields such as chemistry, materials science, biology, and medicine, and promote the clinical translation of AIE-PSs. 

/pdf/aggregation-induced-emission-photosensitizer-based-1t1doox9.pdf

Aggregation-induced emission photosensitizer-based photodynamic therapy in cancer: from chemical to clinical

Bacteria can cause numerous infectious diseases and has been a major threat to human humans. Although antibiotics have partially succeeded in treating bacteria, owing to antibiotic abuse, the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria has drastically diminished their potency. Since the invention of laser, the combination of light and photosensitizers, photodynamic therapy (PDT), has become an effective noninvasive treatment along with photothermal therapy (PTT), in which heat is generated by nonradiative relaxation. Antimicrobial PDT and PTT are emerging as effective treatments for bacterial infection, particularly against MDR bacteria. This mini review covers the recent progresses in PDT and PTT for bacterial treatment. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/smo.20220010

Photodynamic and photothermal therapies for bacterial infection treatment

Aggregation induced emission (AIE) photosensitizers have attracted great attention due to their good performance in photodynamic therapy (PDT). However, the therapeutic effect of AIE photosensitizer is often highly dependent on the biological microenvironment because it is difficult to produce type I and type II reactive oxygen species (ROS) simultaneously. Herein, an electron-rich anion-π+ AIEgen Pys-QM-TT is reported, which is capable of highly generating type I and type II ROS and realizing near-infrared fluorescence imaging synchronously. In the rational design of AIE photosensitizer, the strong electron-donating triphenylamine unit, π-bridge thiophene and electron-withdrawing pyridinium salt unit can enhance the D–π–A behavior, thereby improving the intramolecular charge transfer effect and extending the wavelength. Meanwhile, the powerful D–π–A effect is supposed to reduce ∆ES-T and promote the intersystem crossing processes, thus increasing the generation of ROS. In addition, the negatively charged anion in pyridinium salt group provides an electron-rich environment for the excited photosensitizer, so as to promote electron transfer to generate type I ROS. Therefore, Pys-QM-TT can not only generate type I and type II ROS simultaneously with weak environmental dependence, but also effectively inhibit bacterial infections and ablate tumor tissue by promoting tumor cell apoptosis, inhibiting tumor cell proliferation and anti-angiogenesis. 

An AIE Photosensitizer with Simultaneous Type I and Type II ROS Generation: Efficient Bacterial Elimination and Hypoxic Tumor Ablation

Bacterial infection poses a significant threat to human health, and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains has exacerbated the situation. Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) has emerged as a promising antibiotic-free treatment option that employs reactive oxygen species (ROS) to cause oxidative damage to bacteria and surrounding biomolecules for treating microbial infections. This review summarizes the recent progress in the development of organic photosensitizers, including porphyrins, chlorophyll, phenothiazines, xanthenes and aggregation-induced emission photosensitizers, for aPDT. A detailed description of innovative therapeutic strategies that rely on the infection microenvironment or the unique structural properties of bacteria to amplify the therapeutic effects is provided. Moreover, the combination of aPDT with other therapy strategies such as antimicrobial peptide therapy, photothermal therapy (PTT) or gas therapy, is described. Finally, the current challenges and perspectives of organic photosensitizers for clinical antibacterial applications are discussed.

Development of organic photosensitizers for antimicrobial photodynamic therapy.

In recent years, aggregation-induced emission photosensitizers (AIE-PSs) for antibacterial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) have received increasing attention because of their ability to increase reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in the aggregation state. However, their antibacterial effect still has great room for improvement. Herein, we propose that if the rotation of some bonds in AIE-PSs is restricted, the nonradiative decay could be further suppressed to boost the generation of fluorescence and ROS, so as to improve their antibacterial efficacy. Following this molecular design strategy, we developed a new class of carbazole group-based AIE-PSs (CPVBA, CPVBP, CPVBP2, and CPVBP3), in which the rotation of phenyl-N bonds is restricted in the carbazole ring. Compared with diphenylamine group-based AIE-PSs with free rotation of phenyl-N bonds, carbazole group-based AIE-PSs showed stronger fluorescence, ROS generation, and antibacterial abilities, demonstrating the feasibility of this new design strategy. Notably, CPVBP3 can enter the entire cell of E. coli to exert its antibacterial effect, and there are few reports of photosensitizers with similar functions. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, the light dose (1.2 J/cm2) we used for CPVBP2 to kill Staphylococcus aureus is much lower than that of many reported photosensitizers, indicating great prospects for AIE antimicrobial photosensitizers.

Restricting Bond Rotations by Ring Fusion: A Novel Molecular Design Strategy to Improve Photodynamic Antibacterial Efficacy of AIE Photosensitizers.

Fluorescence quenching occurs in most nitroaromatic compounds due to photoinduced electron transfer (PET) effects, limiting their use as image-guided photosensitizers for anticancer photodynamic therapy (PDT) or as probes for nitroreductase in hypoxic cells. Herein, we developed a tumor-targeting aggregation-induced emission photosensitizer (AIE-PS), Biotin-TTVBA, by binding TTVBA (a nitrobenzoic acid-based AIE-PS with a free carboxylic acid group) to biotin. Biotin-TTVBA has near-infrared emission characteristics in DMSO containing 99% toluene, a large Stoke's shift (210 nm), high photostability, wash-free cell staining ability and type I/II photosensitivity. Compared with TTVBA, Biotin-TTVBA significantly increased cellular uptake (a 60-fold increase) and selective uptake of tumor cells (a 250% increase in the ratio of tumor cells to normal cells), resulting in enhanced antitumor activity against tumor cells (HeLa and MCF-7) and a decreased IC50 value (from >40 μM to 2.5 μM). Taken together, the results of this study call attention to AIE-PSs based on nitroaromatic groups because of their strong fluorescence and ROS generation ability, which can be used in image-guided photodynamic therapy and provide a new approach for tumor-targeting design of AIE-PSs.

An AIE photosensitizer with unquenched fluorescence based on nitrobenzoic acid for tumor-targeting and image-guided photodynamic therapy.

An intelligent photosensitizer that selectively kills Gram-positive pathogenic cocci while preventing harm to beneficial bacilli

CuO2‐ICG Nanocomposite: A Multifunctional Solution for Diabetic Wound Management with Antibacterial and Anti‐inflammatory Effects

Chiral cholesteric molecular tweezer 7d was synthesized and its influences on changes in the ultraviolet (UV) and fluorescence spectra of various anions were investigated. The results displayed that molecular tweezer 7d selectively recognized F− ions in dimethyl sulfoxide with a detection limit of 5.14 μmol/L, while other anions had little interference. On this basis, a method for the rapid detection of F− ions by host molecular tweezer 7d was established, and the naked-eye detection of F− was realized through the unique yellow color of the complex solution. According to the determination of F− ions in real food samples, it was proved that the established method had good application prospects in F− ion detection.

/pdf/cholesteric-chiral-molecular-tweezer-for-rapid-detection-of-bsrelfuy.pdf

Cholesteric Chiral Molecular Tweezer for Rapid Detection of F− in Food Samples

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