Fig. 5: Therapeutic efficacy of H@Gd-NCPs in CT26-bearing mice.

a Tumor growth curves after various treatments ([Gd³⁺] = 30 mg kg⁻¹ and [Hemin] = 12.5 mg kg⁻¹) with or without irradiation. Treatments were performed on days 0 and 6. X-ray radiation therapy was performed 6 h after nanomedicines intravenous injection (black arrow). RT 6 Gy × 2 with fractions delivered 6 days apart (n = 8 biologically independent animals, ***p = 0.0001). Data were presented as mean ± SEM. b Tumor weight without irradiation groups collected on day 14, tumor weight with irradiation groups collected on day 21 (n = 8 biologically independent animals, ***p = 0.0001). c Dynamic body weight of CT26-bearing mice in different groups during treatments (n = 8 biologically independent animals). d Images of Ki67 immunohistochemical staining of tumor slices, immunofluorescence images of tumor slices stained with TUNEL assay kit and γ-H2Aχ antibody and H&E sections, scale bar = 100 μm. The γ-H2Aχ tumor slices were harvested 24 h after radiotherapy (6 Gy × 1) and the Ki67, TUNEL tumor slices were harvested 48 h after radiotherapy (6 Gy × 1). These experiments were repeated twice independently with similar results. e–g Quantification of the relative percentage of (e) Ki67 positive cells (**p = 0.0016, *p = 0.0227, ***p = 0.0005) (f) TUNEL (**p = 0.0035, **p = 0.0053, **p = 0.0072) and γ-H2Aχ (*p = 0.0364, **p = 0.0093, **p = 0.0031) mean fluorescence intensity after different treatments (n = 3 biologically independent animals). Data (b, c, e–g) were presented as mean ± SD. Two-sided Student’s t-test was used to calculate the statistical difference between two groups. N.S. represented non-significance, and *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Source data are provided as a Source data file.