Multimodal imaging-guided chemo-photothermal therapy is an excellent cancer treatment,which can not only efficiently against tumor,but also can offer precise treatment window and real-time monitoring of the treatment efficiency.In our work,polydopamine (PDA)-coated gold nanobones (AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes) were designed for this approach.The AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes have strong absorbance in the near infrared (NIR) region and higher photothermal conversion efficiency (75.48 ％) than gold nanobones alone,which was facilitated for photoacoustic imaging and photothermal therapy.Besides,the loading efficiency of doxorubicin (DOX) by AuNBs@PDA nanocomplexes could be up to about 70 ％ and DOX release from AuNBs@PDA/DOX nanocomplexes sensitively response to the lower pH environment and NIR laser irradiation,which makes them become the excellent nano-carrier for the delivery of chemotherapy drug.In vitro and in vivo studies showed significant cytotoxicity and antitumor efficacy by the AuNBs@PDA/DOX nanoplatform with negligible side effects.Meanwhile,the nanoplatform was also successfully employed for computed tomography (CT) imaging,attributing to the high atomic number and high X-ray attenuation coefficient of gold.Therefore,we believed that the proposed PDA-coated gold nanobones would be a novel multifunctional theranostic nanoagent to realize the PA/CT imaging-guided chemo-photothermal therapy of cancer.