Safety and efficacy of citric acid-upconverting nanoparticles for multimodal biological imaging in BALB/c mice.
There has been significant progress with rare-earth coated upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) representing a promising new generation of contrast agents for biomedical applications. However, in vivo biological safety remains poorly investigated. This work examined citric acid-UCNP (NaYF4:Yb3+/Gd3+, ∼ 5 nm, Cit-UCNP) generated as contrast agents for multimodal imaging with concurrent magnetic resonance (MRI) and X-ray computed tomography (CT). We first examined the in vitro cytotoxicity and efficacy of Cit-UCNPs as a contrast agent. We then performed a systematic investigation of their in vivo biodistribution and biocompatibility. Our results noted that Cit-UCNPs have minimal toxicity and demonstrated significant potential as contrast agents for multimodal biomedical imaging. This study indicates Cit-UCNPs could be a valuable addition to enhance long-term targeted diagnostic and prognostic multimodal clinical imaging approaches.
['Liu|Cheng|C|', 'Shao|Hua|H|', 'Li|Dan|D|', 'Sui|Xin|X|', 'Liu|Ning|N|', 'Rahman|Saeed Ur|SU|', 'Li|Xiang|X|', 'Arany|Praveen R|PR|']
Contrast agents Cytotoxicity Biomedical imaging Citric acid upconverting nanoparticles Clinical safety