Tailoring the Amphiphilic Structure of Zwitterionic AIE Photosensitizers to Boost Antitumor Immunity

Although photodynamic therapy (PDT) for thorough cancer treatment is hindered by the limited generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) with short lifetime from photosensitizers, PDT-induced antitumor immune response remedies the defects. Previous studies show that inducing immunogenic cell deaths is an attractive approach to activate antitumor immunity, which confers a robust adjuvanticity to dying cancer cells. In this work, amphiphilic luminogens with aggregation-induced emission characteristics (AIEgens) are rationally designed and synthesized. By modulating the hydrophobic π-bridge and zwitterionic functional groups, these AIEgens exhibit tunable organelle specificity to lysosome, endoplasmic reticulum, and plasma membrane and enhance ROS generation ability. Notably, the membrane-targeting AIEgen namely TPS-2 induces cell death and membrane rupture via PDT to facilitate the release of antigens and activation of immune cells. Furthermore, the size-controlled TPS-2 nanoaggregates are found to serve as an adjuvant, promoting antigen accumulation and delivery to sufficiently boost the in vivo antitumor immunity by only one dose injection in a prophylactic tumor vaccination model. This work thus provides new insights into optimizing AIE photosensitizers via a hydrophobicity-hydrophilicity balance strategy for evoking an antitumor immunity and directly suppressing the distanced tumor. A single small-molecular system for PDT-stimulated antitumor immunity is envisioned.