Preparation and characterization of a novel silicon-modified nanobubble

Abstract

Nanobubbles (NBs) opened a new field of ultrasound imaging. There is still no practical method to control the diameter of bubbles. In this study, we developed a new method to control the size by incorporating of silicon hybrid lipids into the bubble membrane. The range of particle size of resulting NBs is between 523.02 ± 46.45 to 857.18 ± 82.90, smaller than the conventional microbubbles. The size of resulting NBs increased with the decrease in amount of silicon hybrid lipids, indicating the diameter of NBs can be regulated through modulating the ratio of silicon hybrid lipids in the bubble shell. Typical harmonic signals could be detected. The in vitro and in vivo ultrasound imaging experiments demonstrated these silicon-modified NBs had significantly improved ultrasound contrast enhancement abilities. Cytotoxicity assays revealed that these NBs had no obvious cytotoxicity to the 293 cell line at the tested bubble concentration. Our results showed that the novel NBs could use as nanoscale ultrasound contrast agents, providing the foundation for NBs in future applications including contrast-enhanced imaging and drug/gene delivery.

The Optimized Fabrication of a Novel Nanobubble for Tumor Imaging

“…Gas-filled bubbles are commonly used as echo-enhancers in ultrasonic diagnosis and as drug-loading vehicles in therapy (McEwan et al, 2015; Huang et al, 2017; Snipstad et al, 2017). Compared to microbubbles that were trapped in the blood pool, nanoscale bubbles (nanobubbles) are promising contrast agents for extravascular ultrasonic imaging and drug delivery (Guvener et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2017). However, research on the preparation condition of nanobubbles with uniform distribution is still in the initial stages (Perera et al, 2017).…”

A Novel Bimodal Imaging Agent Targeting HER2 Molecule of Breast Cancer

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Stimuli-responsive nanobubbles for biomedical applications

“…reported a method of incorporating silicon hybrid lipids into the normal lipid shell of NBs to control the NBs size and found the size of the NBs could be adjusted from ~500 nm to ~850 nm by modulating the ratio of silicon hybrid lipids in the NBs shell. 187 Hernandez et al…”

“…One of the easiest and most straightforward light microscope techniques is transmitted light microscopy. 137,175,187,189,209,210 The NBs appear dark against a bright background because of absorption and/or refraction of the transmitted light (Fig. 24).…”