Porphyrins are aromatic, organic, light-absorbing molecules that occur abundantly in nature, especially in the form of molecular self-assemblies. By conjugating porphyrins to lipids, we formed porphysomes, self-assembled liposome-like nanoparticles with intrinsic multimodal photonic properties. High-density porphyrin packing in the nanoparticle bilayer enables light absorption and conversion to heat with extremely high efficiency, making porphysomes ideal candidates for photothermal therapy and photoacoustic imaging. Upon nanostructure dissociation during cell uptake, the fluorescence and photodynamic activity of the porphyrin monomers is restored. In addition, metal ions can be directly incorporated into the porphyrin building blocks of the preformed porphysomes, thus unlocking their potential for PET and MRI. By changing the way porphyrin-lipids assemble, we developed HDL-like porphyrin nanoparticles (&lt;20 nm), porphyrin microbubbles (~2 μm), giant porphyrin vesicles (~100 μm), hybrid porphyrin-gold nanoparticles, and metal-chelating nanotexaphyrins. We have validated porphysome’s multimodal utilities in different cancer types, tumor models, and animal species. The effort of moving porphysomes towards first-in-human use is well on its way. In summary, the simple yet intrinsic multimodal nature of porphysomes represents a new nanomedicine paradigm and also confers high clinical translation potential.

Porphysome nanotechnology: From discovery to translation

256th National Meeting (2018)

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