Assembled small organic molecules for photodynamic therapy and photothermal therapy

As a worldwide major public health problem, cancer is one of the leading causes of death. Effective treatment of cancer is an important challenge. Therefore, photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) have been widely applied as anti-tumour strategies due to their high-performance and limited side effects. Inspired by natural supramolecular architectures, such as cytochromes and photosystems, the hierarchical supramolecular assembly of small organic molecules has been developed for their use as photosensitizers or photothermal agents for PDT and PTT, respectively. In this manuscript, we will summarize the recent progress of PDT and PTT based on the assembly of small organic molecules.