Nature-inspired nanothylakoids for multimodal cancer therapeutics

Multimodal therapy has been recognized as a powerful platform for the precise treatment of cancer. However, the reported multimodal therapeutic systems often involve sophisticated components and tedious fabrication procedures. As such, developing nature-inspired and easily-obtainable theranostic agents for multimodal cancer therapy remains challenging. In this work, we propose nature-inspired nanothylakoids as a multimodal theranostic agent for cancer therapy both in vitro and in vivo. Nanothylakoids extracted from spinach leaves exhibit prominent photothermal and photodynamic inactivation on 4T1 and MCF-7 cancer cells due to their outstanding photothermal conversion/photosensitization capabilities. Additionally, the peroxidase-like catalytic activity of nanothylakoids is simultaneously verified, which facilitates the oxidation of H2O2 to the cytotoxic hydroxyl radical (·OH) and thus cause efficient cell apoptosis. Interestingly, a selective cytotoxicity of nanothylakoids on MCF-7 cancer cells is found due to their overexpression of H2O2. In vitro and in vivo results substantiate the prominent therapeutic outcome and excellent biosafety of nanothylakoids. Nanothylakoids with photothermal/photodynamic effects and peroxidase-like catalytic activity open a new avenue for the development of nature-inspired theranostic materials, holding great promise in multimodal cancer therapeutics.