SERS monitoring the dynamics of local pH in lysosome of living cells during photothermal therapy

Abstract

In this communication, we propose a gold nanorod-based SERS nanotracker to monitor the local pH change during photothermal therapy (PTT). The dynamic SERS analysis indicated that the local pH of the lysosome in living cells increased during the PTT which would be helpful to understand the cellular metabolic processes and further facilitate the photosensitizer screening and optimization.