Enhancing biocatalysis of a MXene-based biomimetic plasmonic assembly for targeted cancer treatments in NIR-II biowindow

Abstract Biocatalysis-based nanomedicines have attracted considerable attention in the field of biomedicine. However, improving catalytic activity as a prerequisite for the therapeutic effect of biocatalysis is still a core scientific problem that needs to be solved urgently. Herein, an efficient strategy of plasmonic enhanced biocatalysis is proposed and applied to biomimetic photoinduced plasmonic assembly (NPD@M). The assembly consists of Nb2C plasmon (MXene), Pt nanozymes, doxorubicin (DOX) and tumor cytomembrane. After homologous targeting and internalization into tumor cells, the hot-electrons are excited from MXene under NIR-II laser irradiation remarkably facilitates the catalase-like and oxidase-like activities of Pt nanozymes to produce O2 and ROS, combining with tumor-penetrating photothermal therapy. Furthermore, DOX is released under hyperpyrexia and acidic condition, which is strengthened through the inhibition of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) mediated drug efflux caused by O2 and ROS. The results show that the HeLa cell viability reduced 38.67% by MXene enhanced nanozyme treatment compared to the nanozyme alone. The plasmonic assembly has achieved significant tumor regression in vivo. This work presents a novel plasmonic assembly for the ultra-active biocatalysis based on the plasmonic hot electrons for increasing therapeutic effect of tumor, which further promotes the development of biocatalytic nanomedicines.