Figure 5.

Hypoxia-activated photothermal therapy with IR1048-MZ in A549 tumor-bearing mice (injection dose: 200 μL 40 μg/mL). (A) Photograph and infrared thermal imaging of a mouse with two A549 tumors on the left and right hind legs 14 h after intravenous injection of IR1048-MZ. The room temperature was 23 °C. Tumor 1 was injected with dicoumarin as an inhibitor of NTR; Tumor 2 was without treatment. (B) Frozen sections of the tumor with or without injection of the NTR inhibitor (coumarin) stained with PIMO (green fluorescence) and DAPI (blue fluorescence); bars: 25 μm. (C) Infrared thermal imaging of the A549 tumor-bearing mice injected with saline or IR1048-MZ with or without 980 nm NIR laser irradiation (0.1 W/cm²) for 2 min. The room temperature was 23 °C. (D) The A549 tumor growth curves over 30 d after treatment with 200 µL saline or 200 µL IR1048-MZ (40 µg/mL) with or without NIR laser irradiation (980 nm, 0.1 W/cm², 2 min). (E) The survival rate of A549 tumor-bearing mice after treatment. n = 5, ** P < 0.01. (F) The body weight variation of A549 tumor-bearing mice after treatment. n = 5, ** P < 0.01. (G) H&E staining of tumor regions from the different groups; bars: 50 µm.