Improved Orthogonality in Naphthalimide/Cyanine Dyad Boosts Superoxide Generation: a Tumor-Targeted Type-I Photosensitizer for Photodynamic Therapy of Tumor by Inducing Ferroptosis

It is highly desired to achieve Type-I photosensitizer (PS) to overcome the hypoxic limitation found in most clinically used PSs. Herein, a new heavy-atom-free Type-I PS T-BNCy5 is presented by incorporating a biotin-modified naphthalimide (NI) unit into the meso-position of a N-benzyl-functionalized, strongly photon-capturing pentamethine cyanine (Cy5) dye. Such molecular engineering induces a rigid orthogonal geometry between NI and Cy5 units by introducing an intramolecular sandwich-like pi-pi stacking assembly, which effectively promotes intersystem crossing (ISC) and greatly extends the triplet-state lifetime (tau = 389 mu s), thereby markedly improving the superoxide (O-2(center dot-))-generating ability. In vitro assays reveal that T-BNCy5 specifically accumulates in mitochondria, where it not only generates O-2(center dot-) under photoirradiation but also induces the burst of the most cytotoxic hydroxy radical (HO center dot) by a cascade of biochemical reactions, ultimately triggering cell ferroptosis with the IC50 value up to approximate to 0.45 mu m whether under normoxia or hypoxia. In vivo assays manifest that, benefiting from its biotin unit, T-BNCy5 displays a strong tumor-targeting ability, and after a single PDT treatment, it can not only ablate the tumor almost completely but also be cleared from the body through biosafe urinary excretion, indicating its potential for future clinical translation.