Near-Infrared Organic Fluorescent Nanoparticles for Long-term Monitoring and Photodynamic Therapy of Cancer

Abstract

Photodynamic therapy (PDT), which utilizes reactive oxygen species to ablate tumor, has attracted much attention in recent years. Photosensitizers with near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence as well as efficient ROS generation ability have been used for precise diagnosis and simultaneous treatment of cancer. However, photosensitizers frequently suffer from low ROS generation ability and NIR fluorescence quenching in aqueous media due to the aggregation. Methods: We prepare an effective AIE active NIR emissive photosensitizer containing rhodanine as electron acceptor and triphenylvinylthiophene as electron donor is prepared, and encapsulate the corresponding photosensitizer into Pluronic F127 to fabricate NIR organic fluorescent nanoparticles. We then evaluate the NIR fluorescence bioimaging and photodynamic therapy ability of TPVTR dots in vitro and in vivo. Results: The yielded organic fluorescent nanoparticles exhibit effective ROS generation ability, bright NIR emission, high photostability, and good biocompatibility. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments confirm that NIR organic fluorescent nanoparticles demonstrate good performances in long-term tracing and photodynamic ablation of tumor. Conclusion: In summary, the synthesized organic fluorescent nanoparticles, TPVTR dots, showed great potentials in long-term cell tracing and photodynamic therapy of tumor. Our study highlights the efficient strategy for developing promising near-infrared organic fluorescent nanoparticles in advancing the field of bioimaging and further image-guide clinical applications.

Non-invasive In Vivo Imaging of Cancer Using Surface-Enhanced Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SESORS)

“…Both MRI and CT imaging systems are associated with significant costs and are limited in their specificity, thus relying on the need for biopsies to provide cellular and molecular information. While theranostic approaches to improve diagnosis and cure rates of various cancer types is a very active area of research with multiple approaches being tested 4-18, complete tumor resection, which can only be achieved via complete tumor visualization, is deemed the most important factor for the outcome of GBM patients.…”

Orange-red to NIR emissive carbon dots for antimicrobial, bioimaging and bacteria diagnosis

“…Moreover, they have low cytotoxicity, slight biological tissue light damage, [21][22][23] high sensitivity and direct visualization, 24 which helps to improve the efficiency of disease detection. 25,26 Meng Y et al 27 prepared red-emitting multifunctional CQDs with good water dispersion and excellent fluorescence stability, exhibiting low cytotoxicity and fluorescence imaging. CQDs with NIR fluorescence have also shown an ability for imaging various biological samples in vitro and in vivo.…”

Ultrastable Near-Infrared Aggregation-Induced Emission Nanoparticles as a Fluorescent Probe: Long-Term Tumor Monitoring and Lipid Droplet Tracking

“…[1][2][3] Noninvasive bioimaging is an indispensable and versatile approach for precise diagnosis in biomedical research, which provides physiological and pathological details of bioorganisms and monitors complicated biological processes. 2,[4][5][6][7] So far, imaging technologies and methods have been widely investigated in biomedical diagnoses, such as positron emission tomography, 8,9 computed tomography, 10,11 photoacoustic tomography, [12][13][14] magnetic resonance imaging, 15,16 fluorescence imaging, and single-photon emission computed tomography. [17][18][19] Among them, fluorescence imaging is beneficial for providing vital biomedical information, and can serve as an extraordinary method for precancer diagnosing and postcancer monitoring, due to its direct visualization, high resolution and sensitivity, low cost and fast key information collecting at the subcellular level, and so forth.…”