Cancer-Targeted Optical Imaging with Fluorescent Zinc Oxide Nanowires

Abstract

Herein we demonstrate that intrinsically fluorescent zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires (NWs) can be adopted for molecularly targeted imaging of cancer cells, after they are functionalized to render water solubility, biocompatibility, and low cellular toxicity. Optical imaging of integrin αvβ3 on U87MG human glioblastoma cells was achieved with RGD peptide-conjugated green fluorescent ZnO NWs, which opened up new avenues of research for investigating ZnO NW-based agents in tumor vasculature-targeted molecular imaging and drug delivery.

Biomedical applications of nanotechnology

“…magneto-motive ultrasound (Oh et al 2006), photoacoustic imaging, and magnetic particle hyperthermia (Gupta and Gupta 2005;Liu et al 2016b). The electronic structure of zinc oxide (ZnO) is useful for biomedical applications; for example, the intrinsic fluorescence of ZnO nanowires has been employed to image cancer cells (Hong et al 2011). To this end, functionalization of the surface of ZnO nanowires increases their solubility in water and their biocompatibility and reduces their cellular toxicity.…”

Nanotechnology to augment immunotherapy for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme

“…Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a common subunit on the nanoparticle surfaces that lowers dosage requirement and increases efficacy [16]. Peptide sequences, such as iRGD (Arg-Gly-Asp) can also be used to target tumor vasculature by exploiting the overexpressed a-v-b-3 and a-v-b-5 integrins on GBM during angiogenesis [17][18][19][20][21].…”

Synthesis of ZnO and transition metals doped ZnO nanostructures, their characterization and sensing applications

“…ZnO NRs/NWs are extensively applied in various sensing applications fields, e.g. biosensors [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], biomarker [52][53], drug delivery [54][55] , chemical sensors [56][57][58], gas sensors [59][60], pH sensors [61], humidity sensor [62][63][64], UV sensors [65][66][67][68][69], temperature sensors [70][71], and pressure/force/mass/load sensors [72][73][74][75]. Also, the high performances of several types of sensors have been enhanced by utilizing different metals doped ZnO nanorods, e.g.…”