Aqueous synthesis of PEGylated Ag2S quantum dots and their in vivo tumor targeting behavior.
With significantly decreased light scattering and tissue autofluorescence, fluorescence imaging in the second near infrared (NIR-II, 1000-1700 nm) region has been heavily explored in biomedical field recently. Silver sulfide quantum dots (Ag2S QDs) with unique optical properties were one of the most classic NIR-II imaging probes. However, the Ag2S QDs for in vivo purpose were mainly obtain by oil phase-based high-temperature route at present. Here, we proposed a mild aqueous route to prepare NIR-II emissive Ag2S QDs for in vivo tumor imaging. Original Ag2S QDs was obtained by mixing sodium sulfide and silver nitrate in a thiol-terminated polyethylene glycol (mPEG-SH) solution. Treating the original Ag2S QDs with extra mPEG-SH ligands produced highly PEGyalted Ag2S QDs. These re-PEGylated Ag2S QDs exhibited much better blood circulation and tumor accumulation in vivo comparing with the original ones, which can serve as excellent tumor imaging probes. The whole-body blood vessel imaging of living mice was achieved with high resolution, the bio-distribution of these QDs were studied by NIR-II imaging as well. This work also highlighted the importance of ligand density for tumor targeting.
['Lu|Feng|F|', 'Ju|Wenwen|W|', 'Zhao|Ning|N|', 'Zhao|Ting|T|', 'Zhan|Chen|C|', 'Wang|Qi|Q|', 'Fan|Quli|Q|', 'Huang|Wei|W|']
D000818:Animals D016503:Drug Delivery Systems D005260:Female D056945:Hep G2 Cells D018197:Hepatoblastoma D064593:Heterografts D006801:Humans D051379:Mice D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C D008819:Mice, Nude D061848:Optical Imaging D011092:Polyethylene Glycols D045663:Quantum Dots D012835:Silver Nitrate D013440:Sulfides
NIR-II Silver sulfide Tumor imaging Ligand density