Near-Infrared-Driven Plasmon-Enhanced Au@PtAg Cascade Nanozymes for Cancer Therapy

Nanozymes with cascade catalytic reactions gain advantages over natural enzymes by simplifying the preparation, decreasing the cost, and enhancing the local concentrations of the intermediates and the stability. However, in vivo applications of such cascade nanozymes are hampered due to the low catalytic activity in the complex physiological microenvironment. Substantial research work is currently devoted to exploiting light-driven catalytic kinetic acceleration of nanozymes via hot electron injection from plasmonic nanoparticles. Here, a near-infrared (NIR) light-driven plasmon-enhanced cascade nanozyme with a formulation of Au@Pt0.46Ag0.54 is developed for efficient synergistic cancer therapy. This nanozyme possesses catalase, oxidase, and peroxidase activities and is capable of converting hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and reactive oxygen species through cascade reactions. Both in vitro and in vivo experimental measurements reveal that 808 nm NIR-laser-driven hot electron injection not only obviously enhanced the catalytic activities of the nanozyme but also triggered efficient photothermal conversion, which successfully achieved synergetic catalytic therapy/photothermal therapy for cancer treatment. This strategy of tailoring multi-metal cascade nanozyme techniques opens up avenues for realizing multistep reactions with high catalytic kinetics and provides an innovative way for therapeutic systems with clinical significance.