Roberta C S Neves, Antônio L de Oliveira, Silvany de S Araújo, Palloma L de Oliveira, Ana C Brasileiro-Vidal, Iane B V Alves, José Y R Silva, Leonis L Luz, Larissa T Jesus, Ricardo O Freire, Severino A Junior
Photodynamic and photothermal therapies, enhanced by nanotechnology, show great potential in skin cancer treatment. This study reports the synthesis and characterization of hybrid sodium alginate gels conjugated with protoporphyrin-IX, associated with gold and silver nanoparticles (AgNP/AuNR⊂PpIX-Alg). Silver nanoparticles improved singlet oxygen generation under a 660 nm light (quantum yield of 26.4%), while gold nanorods achieved a 54.3% photothermal conversion efficiency at 785 nm. Dual laser irradiation (660 and 785 nm) led to a strong synergistic therapeutic effect, reducing melanoma cell viability (B16-F10) to 9.83%, with no cytotoxicity to L929 fibroblast cells. These results support AgNP/AuNR⊂PpIX-Alg as a promising platform for multimodal cancer therapy.