A glutathione activatable pro-drug-photosensitizer for combined chemotherapy and photodynamic therapy

During cancer treatment,chemotherapeutic drugs always result in severe side-effects and drug resistance.Therefore,combining cheomtherapy with other therapeutic modalities,such as photodynamic therapy(PDT)and designing an activable platform is promising for precise and efficient anticancer treatment.Herein,we report a“pro-drug-photosensitizer”agent,LMB-S-CPT,bearing a disulfide bond as the glutathione(GSH)-activatable linker.LMB-S-CPT can be selectively activated by GSH to release activated drug,camptothecin(CPT),for chemotherapy and activated photosensitizer,methylene blue(MB),for PDT.LMB-S-CPT exhibits excellent tumor-activatable performance when injected into tumor-bearing mice,as well as specific cancer therapy with negligible toxic side effects.The activatable pro-drug-photosensitizer offers a new strategy for chemo-photodynamic therapy and displays precise,selective and excellent antitumor effect.