Photothermal therapy (PTT) based on photothermal effect of the gold nanostructures, has been widely applied as a noninvasive therapy approach in cancer treatment. However, bare Au nanoparticles are not stable enough during the irradiation process, and cannot harvest sufficient energy to kill tumor cells. To improve this, we have fabricated a stable bioagent by loading gold nanorods (AuNRs) into multicompartment mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MMSNs) for the photothermal therapy. The procedure is that when AuNRs entrapped in MMSNs are irradiated by a laser in the near-infrared region of 808 nm, the hyperthermia produced by the assembled composites is strong enough to damage tumor tissues directly. Both experiments in vitro and in vivo demonstrate that the nanocomposites are perfect candidates as PTT agents for the cancer treatment with a high efficiency. Furthermore, it is found that the nanocomposites have good photostability and consistent temperature fluctuation over 11 on/off cycles with irradiation which the pure AuNRs will not have. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.