Carbon Dots in Bioimaging, Biosensing and Therapeutics: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Figure 3. Toxicity of CDs. a) The effect of surface charge on the toxicity of CDs. Reproduced under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. [118] Copyright 2020, The Authors, published by Springer Nature. b) Toxicity of CDs photolysis products. Reproduced under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. [119]

Carbon dots derived from natural sources and their biological and environmental impacts

“…CDs derived from natural sources have been widely reported with photostability, 22 high quantum yield, 44,95 and tunable emission wavelength, becoming a promising candidate serving as bioimaging agents. 96,97 In the past few years, the fluorescence feature of CDs kept evolving to meet the developing requirement of bioimaging. CDs derived from garlic emitted a robust blue light under UV irradiation and exhibited excitation-dependent behavior.…”

Responsive Hydrogels Based on Triggered Click Reactions for Liver Cancer

“…Over the past decades, researchers have designed and reported many kinds of polymers synthetically and naturally which can be used to synthesize click chemistry hydrogels. [40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Based on a triggered click reaction, responsive hydrogel has good reproducibility of both chemical and physical properties, so you can improve the method to customize its performance. [47,48] In particular, PEG stands out for its excellent biocompatibility, so that it can be a key component in designing and fabricating synthetically thermoresponsive hydrogels.…”

Injectable self-healing hydrogel fabricated from antibacterial carbon dots and ɛ-polylysine for promoting bacteria-infected wound healing

“…Carbon dots (CDs) have wide applications in bioimaging [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], sensing [32][33][34][35][36][37], drug/dye/protein delivery [38][39][40][41] and cancer therapy [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], owning to their excellent characteristics including small size, easy surface functionalization, high stability, strong hydrophilicity, good biocompatibility and low toxicity. By contrast, the potential antibacterial capacity of CDs has been less explored [51][52][53], although CDs possess the advantages of durable and environmentally friendly than metal-containing nanofungicides and traditional antibiotics.…”