Abstract

Retinoblastoma is one of the most severe ocular diseases, of which current chemotherapy is limited to the repetitive intravitreal injections of chemotherapeutics. Systemic drug administration is a less invasive route; however, it is also less efficient for ocular drug delivery because of the existence of blood-retinal barrier and systemic side effects.

Here, a photoresponsive drug release system is reported, which is self-assembled from photocleavable trigonal small molecules, to achieve light-triggered intraocular drug accumulation. After intravenous injection of drug-loaded nanocarriers, green light can trigger the disassembly of the nanocarriers in retinal blood vessels, which leads to intraocular drug release and accumulation to suppress retinoblastoma growth. This proof-of-concept study would advance the development of light-triggered drug release systems for the intravenous treatment of eye diseases.