Acoustic delivery of indocyanine green via biosynthetic gas vesicles for tumor photothermal therapy

by Jiaqi Zhang, Licong Huang, Shuhui Wang, Jingwen Ding, Yuping Yang, Chenhui Li, Ping Zhao, Qian Li, Fei Yan Photothermal therapy (PTT) serves as a complementary strategy to conventional cancer treatments. Indocyanine green (ICG) is the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved photothermal agent. However, its clinical application is hindered by poor stability, short blood half-life, and lack of tumor targeting. Herein, we developed biosynthetic gas vesicles (GVs) covalently conjugated with ICG (ICG-GVs) for remotely controlled, visibly acoustic delivery of ICG to tumors in a subcutaneous xenograft model of MB49 murine bladder cancer in C57BL/6 mice. The resulting ICG-GVs exhibi