Surgery combined with postoperative treatment is a widely accepted therapeutic strategy against breast cancer. Macrophage-based carriers have been proved to be an effective postoperative drug delivery system due to their inflammatory tendency. However, the slow and incomplete release of the cargo and the postoperative inflammation remain to be solved. Here, we described a macrophage-mediated photothermal therapy combined with anti-inflammatory strategy to inhibit breast cancer postoperative relapse. The anti-inflammatory resveratrol and photothermal agent indocyanine green (ICG) were loaded in octaarginine (R8)-modified liposomes, then ingested by macrophages to form the macrophage-based drug delivery system (Res/ICG-R8-Lip@MP). Res/ICG-R8-Lip@MP showed effective tumor-targeting ability via inflammatory tropism of macrophages and excellent near-infrared (NIR) photothermal performance. In vitro experiments showed that the carrier could not only trigger drug release though inflammation, but also utilize the photothermal conversion property to destroy the macrophage-based carrier at the local tumor to maximize drug release. In vivo experiments indicated that Res/ICG-R8-Lip@MP ablated residual tumor tissues and reduced the postoperative inflammation, and at the same time achieved significant effect of inhibiting tumor postoperative relapse. This synergistic photothermal and anti-inflammatory strategy has great potential in postoperative treatment of breast cancer.Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier B.V.