Application of paramagnetic graphene quantum dots as a platform for simultaneous dual-modality bioimaging and tumor-targeted drug delivery

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a multifunctional nanocarrier platform consisting of paramagnetic graphene quantum dots, folate, and doxorubicin for simultaneous fluorescence and MR imaging, and cancer treatment.

Facile synthesis of gadolinium (III) chelates functionalized carbon quantum dots for fluorescence and magnetic resonance dual-modal bioimaging

“…Recently, carbon quantum 4 dots (CQDs) is becoming a superior framework to construct multi-modal imaging probes, because of their advantages such as green synthesis, the ease of surface functionalization, favorable optical properties, and excellent biocompatibility [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. Bourlinos et al separately use tris(hydroxymethyl)-aminomethane as a carbon source and gadopentetic acid as a Gd(III) source to synthesize Gd-doped CQDs for fluorescence/MR imaging [19].…”

Recent Advances in Graphene Quantum Dots as Bioimaging Probes

“…First publications of GQD in vivo applications appeared in the beginning of this millennium [51], and since then the number of articles has increased tremendously. In contrast to other imaging techniques, such as X-ray computed tomography (CT) or positron emission tomography (PET), fluorescence imaging uses non-ionizing radiation and is usually less hazardous [132]. The unique photophysical and photochemical properties and large surface of GQDs offer many in vivo imaging advantages that are hardly realized with common luminophores [103,162].…”

“…Furthermore, doping and/or surface passivation are effective methods to modulate the electronic density of bulk semiconductor materials and to tune their optical and electrical properties. So, dicyandiamide (DCD) [105,106,112], ammonium hydroxide [77,89,91,93,114,115,[129][130][131][132], diethylenetriamine (DETA) [133], urea [107], ethylenediamine (EDA) [111], dimethylformamide (DMF) [38,134] and hydrazine hydrate [123] are chosen as the nitrogen source for doping or modifying GQDs to synthesize nitrogen-functionalized GQDs, while 1,4-phenylene bis(boronic acid) [65], boron oxide (B 2 O 3 ) [76] and Na 2 B 4 O 7 [135] are employed as boron sources to prepare boron-functionalized GQDs. Also, nitrogen and sulfur co-functionalized GQDs are successfully obtained using nitrogen and sulfur containing compounds of 1-methyl-1-propylpiperidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide [68], polythiophene [136] and thiourea [110].…”

Recent Advances in the Synthesis of Graphene-Based Nanomaterials for Controlled Drug Delivery

“…The DOX loaded RGD-or FA-modified GQDs could not only deliver drugs to target cells effectively, but also monitor the process of cellular uptake the drug in real-time without employing external dyes, as shown in Figure 2c,d. In another case, Huang and co-workers developed multifunctional paramagnetic GQDs (folate-GdGQDs) for simultaneous dual-modality bioimaging and tutor targeted drug delivery [53]. The synthetic folate-GdGQDs exhibited a strong therapeutic activity by loading DOX though π-π stacking and hydrophobic interactions, and the fabricated nanocarriers could release about 80% of DOX at pH 5.0 after 48 h. Moreover, the folate-GdGQDs also showed an excellent biocompatibility and good targeting ability for noninvasive cancer diagnosis with T 1 -weighted magnetic resonance (MR) and fluorescence imaging.…”

“…For example, GO has been employed to deliver aromatic drug molecules into cells via π-π stacking interactions [43,44,77]. Functional graphene quantum dots (GQDs) not only delivered the antitumor drug doxorubicin (DOX) into target cells, but can also monitor the cellular uptake and drug release process in real-time without the need of external dyes [45,53,78].…”