Semiconducting polymer nanoparticles for fluorescence biosensors and phototherapy: A review

Abstract

The emergence of semiconductor polymers (SPs) has paved the way for obtaining smart and multifunctional semiconductor polymer nanoparticles (SPNs) with distinctive characteristics and diversified applications. Based on their superior optical properties of SPs, the SPNs exhibit strong fluorescence brightness, low cytotoxicity, admirable photostability, favourable reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation capability, and satisfactory photothermal properties, making it an excellent tool for various biomedical applications (e.g., fluorescence imaging, sensing and phototherapy). Due to such numerous characteristics, like well designability and facile surface functionalization, the SPNs have been continuously emerging as prominent figures in the medical field, becoming leaders in their respective research areas and achieving numerous accomplishments. With the rapid development of SPNs in biomedical fields, a comprehensive reviewer article to summarize the recent achievements is urgent required. This review summarizes the latest advancements achieved in recent five years for the application of SPNs in biological and biomedical fields, particularly in fluorescence biosensors and phototherapy. Following an introduction into the field, we firstly focus on diverse examples of SPNs-based probes for biosensing, both in vitro and in vivo using cancer cells and animal models. Subsequently, the review highlighted the pivotal applications of SPNs in phototherapy, primarily through photodynamic therapy (PDT), photothermal therapy (PTT) and various phototherapy-based synergistic therapy. Finally, we summarize the current challenges and gives an outlook on the potential future trends on SPNs as advanced healthcare material. In the future, researchers should further optimize the performance of materials along with developing more novel multifunctional materials, and strive to expand the applications of SPNs in the biomedical fields, providing new possibilities for improving fluorescence imaging and phototherapy, further boosting their clinical translation.