Black phosphorus-Au-thiosugar nanosheets mediated photothermal induced anti-tumor effect enhancement by promoting infiltration of NK cells in hepatocellular carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a heterogeneous cancer required combination therapy, such as photothermal therapy and chemotherapy. In recent years, cancer immunotherapies are rapidly evolving and are some of the most promising avenues to approach malignancies. Thus, the combination of the traditional therapies and immunotherapy in one platform may improve the efficacy for HCC treatment. RESULTS: In this work, we have prepared a black phosphorus (BP)-Au-thiosugar nanosheets (BATNS), in which Au-thiosugar coating and functionalization improved the stability of both black phosphorus nanosheets (BPNS) and gold ions in different simulated physiological environments. The compression of the BATNS band gap can convert more photon energy to heat generation compared with BPNS, resulting in higher photothermal conversion efficiency. The in vitro and in vivo results also revealed a stronger reduction on the hepatocellular carcinoma of mice and prolonged survival of disease models compared with BPNS. More importantly, BATNS showed an additional immune effect by increasing local NK cell infiltration but not T cell on the liver cancer treatment, and this immune effect was caused by the thermal effect of BATNS photothermal treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The novel BATNS could improve the stability of BPNS and simultaneously combine the cancer thermotherapy and immunotherapy leaded by local NK cell infiltration, resulting in a better therapeutic efficacy on hepatocellular carcinoma. This work also provided a new path to design BP-based materials for biomedical applications. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-022-01286-z.