Modulation of donor in purely organic triplet harvesting AIE-TADF photosensitizer for image-guided photodynamic therapy

Debasish Barman, Pachaiyappan Rajamalli, Anil Parsram Bidkar, Tapashi Sarmah, Siddhartha Sankar Ghosh, Eli Zysman-Colman, Parameswar Krishnan Iyer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Image-guided photodynamic therapy has been acknowledged as one of the most demonstrative therapeutic modalities for cancer treatment because of its high precision, non-invasiveness, and improved imaging ability. A series of purely organic photosensitizers, denoted as BTMCz, BTMPTZ, and BTMPXZ, have been designed and synthesized and are found to exhibit both thermally activated delayed fluorescence and aggregation-induced emission simultaneously. Experimental and theoretical studies were combined to reveal that modulation of the donor of the photosensitizer enables distinct thermally activated delayed fluorescence via a second-order spinorbit perturbation mechanism involving lowest singlet charge-transfer and higher-lying triplet locally excited states, respectively. Further, different donor strengths and unique aggregations (H-, J- and Xtype packings) greatly influence their color-tunable up-converted luminescence and endow them with superb dispersibility in water. The confocal microscopy-based cellular uptake study confirms the successful internalization of the nano-probes. At the same time, BTMCz enables the generation of reactive oxygen species (singlet oxygen) under white-light irradiation, enabling the efficient killing of cancer cells.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2409533
JournalSmall
VolumeOnline
Early online date9 Jan 2025
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 9 Jan 2025

Keywords

  • Photosensitizer
  • Aggregation-Induced Emission
  • Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence
  • Singlet Oxygen
  • Photodynamic Therapy

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