Aggregation-Induced Emission: Illuminating the Path from Photothermal Ablation to Systemic Immunity

Abstract Cancer photothermal immunotherapy has attracted great attention in cancer treatment for its ability to trigger systemic antitumor immune responses and reverse tumor immune tolerance, offering prospects for clinical application. However, conventional photothermal agents suffer from aggregation-caused fluorescence quenching, low photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE), and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME), which severely restrict their therapeutic efficacy and clinical translation. Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) effectively overcome these drawbacks by virtue of their unique aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics and tailorable molecular structures. Molecular engineering strategies can be further adopted to modulate the molecular structures of AIEgens for the treatment of different types of cancer. On this basis, nanodelivery systems including synthetic carriers and biomimetic carriers can further improve the solubility of materials, enhance deep tumor penetration, and achieve efficient immune synergy. This review summarizes the recent progress in AIE-based photothermal immunotherapy, with a particular emphasis on immune regulatory mechanisms, as well as molecular engineering strategies, nanocarrier design, and theranostic applications.