Photothermally Reinforced Nanozyme Remodeling Tumor Microenvironment of Redox and Metabolic Homeostasis to Enhance Ferroptosis in Tumor Therapy

Abstract

The acidity and high GSH level in the tumor microenvironment (TME) greatly limit the antitumor activity of nanozymes. Thus, enhancing nanozymes’ activity is fundamentally challenging in tumor therapy. Although the combination of photothermal therapy (PTT) and nanozymes can enhance the catalytic activity, cancer cells will overexpress heat shock proteins (HSPs) at high temperature, aggravating the heat resistance of tumor cells, which in turn compromises the outcome of chemodynamic therapy. Herein, we propose an iron-doped metal–organic framework nanozyme (IB@Fe-ZIF8@PDFA) that can be activated under the weak acidity and high level of GSH, demonstrating the activities of GSH oxidation (GSH-OXD), peroxidase (POD), and NADH oxidase (NADH-OXD). Under laser irradiation, it displays photothermal-enhanced multienzyme activities to simultaneously eliminate tumors and inhibit tumor metastasis. While consuming endogenous GSH, IB@Fe-ZIF8@PDFA promotes the decomposition of H₂O₂ into ·OH, enhancing ferroptosis in tumor cells. Surprisingly, IB@Fe-ZIF8@PDFA nanozyme can oxide NADH and subsequently limit the ATP supply, reducing the expression of HSPs and significantly weakening the heat resistance of tumor cells during PTT. Meanwhile, H₂O₂ is generated during this procedure, which can endogenously replenish the consumed H₂O₂. Thus, this IB@Fe-ZIF8@PDFA nanozyme constitutes a self-cascading platform to consume GSH and NADH, endogenously replenish the H₂O₂ and continuously generate ·OH to facilitate ferroptosis by disrupting the redox and metabolic homeostasis in tumor cells, achieving tumor elimination and tumor metastasis inhibition.