A Novel Bifunctional Nanoplatform with Aggregation-Induced Emission Property for Efficient Photodynamic Killing of Bacteria and Wound Healing

BACKGROUND: Photodynamic antimicrobial therapy (PDAT) has been extensively studied because of its potential applications such as precise controllability, high spatiotemporal accuracy, and non-invasiveness. More importantly, it is difficult for bacteria to develop resistance to the aforementioned PDATs. However, the selectivity of traditional PDAT methods to bacteria is generally poor, so it has been proposed to introduce positively charged components such as quaternary ammonium salts to enhance the targeting of bacteria; however, they always possess high toxicity to normal cells. As a result, measures should be taken to enhance the targeting of bacteria and avoid side effects on normal cells. METHODS AND RESULTS: In our work, we creatively design a nanoplatform with high anti-bacterial efficiency, low side effects and its size is approximately 121 nm. BSA, as a nanocarrier, encapsulates the photosensitizer (E)-4-(4-(diphenylamino)styryl)-1-methylpyridin-1-ium with AIE properties named as BSA-Tpy, which increases its circulation time in vivo and improves the biocompatibility. Under acidic conditions (pH = 5.0), the surface positive charge of the BSA-Tpy is increased to +18.8 mV due to protonation of amine residues to achieve the targeting effect on bacteria. Besides, under the irradiation of white light, the BSA-Tpy will produce ROS to kill bacteria efficiently about 99.99% for both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, which shows the potential application value for the treatment of infected wounds. CONCLUSION: We have developed a feasible method for photodynamic antibacterial therapy, possessing excellent biocompatibility and high antibacterial efficiency with good fluorescence imaging property.