Tuning the Brightness and Photostability of Organic Dots for Multivalent Targeted Cancer Imaging and Surgery.
Hailin CongKaiqi WangZhuha ZhouJiajia YangYing PiaoBing YuYou-Qing ShenXiaoxuan ZhouPublished in: ACS nano (2020)
Specific labeling of biomarkers with bright and high photostable fluorophores is vital in fluorescent imaging applications. Here, we report a general strategy to develop single-molecule dendritic nanodots with finely tunable optical properties for in vivo fluorescent imaging. The well-defined nanodots are based on the divergent growth of biodegradable polylysine dendrimers with a fluorophore as the core. By tuning the size and surface chemistry, we obtained fluorescent nanodots with excellent brightness and photostability, favorable pharmacokinetics, and multivalent tumor-targeting capability. The nanodots provided robust, stable, long-lasting, and specific fluorescence enhancement in tumor tissue with an in situ tumor-to-normal ratio (TNR) of ∼3 and lasting over 5 days and an ex vivo TNR up to ∼17, holding considerable promise for cancer imaging and image-guided surgery. This strategy significantly improves the in vivo performance of fluorophores and can be applied to other modality imaging probes.
Keyphrases
- single molecule
- high resolution
- living cells
- minimally invasive
- fluorescent probe
- quantum dots
- small molecule
- coronary artery bypass
- cancer therapy
- drug delivery
- young adults
- atrial fibrillation
- squamous cell carcinoma
- big data
- high speed
- tandem mass spectrometry
- liquid chromatography
- drug discovery
- energy transfer
- molecularly imprinted