Pancreatic and colon cancer are malignant tumors of the digestive system that currently lack effective treatments. In cancer cells, a high level of glutathione (GSH) is indispensable to scavenge excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) and detoxify xenobiotics, which make it a potential target for cancer therapy. GSH depletion has been proved to improve the therapeutic efficacy of photodynamic therapy. Here, we reported that naked mesoporous rhodium nanospheres (Rh MNs), prepared by soft template redox method, can act as GSH depletion agent and photothermal conversion agent to achieve synergistic therapy respectively. Different from conventional nanoagents, Rh MNs with the characteristics of easy synthesis, simple structure and multiple functions can decrease the GSH level in tumor and depict excellent photothermal ability with a high photothermal conversion efficiency (PTCE) up to 39%. Notably, multiple anti-tumor mechanisms in CT26 and BxPC-3 tumor models, include inhibited anti-apoptosis, DNA replication repair, and GSH synthesis are revealed, and the pancreatic tumor cure rate of the cooperative treatment group is 80%. Collectively, we developed Rh MNs to combine GSH depletion with photothermal therapy for cancer treatment.

Naked mesoporous rhodium nanospheres with glutathione depletion and photothermal capabilities for tumor therapy