Gold nanoparticles protected by fluorinated ligands for 19F MRI

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles coated with fluorinated ligands (F-MPCs) present features suitable for (19)F MRI as observed from phantom experiments. Cellular uptake, by HeLa cells, and toxicity of fluorescent dye-decorated F-MPCs are presented together with their ability to bind hydrophobic molecules allowing for a potential combination of targeting, delivery and imaging features.

Fluorinated and Charged Hydrogenated Alkanethiolates Grafted on Gold: Expanding the Diversity of Mixed-Monolayer Nanoparticles for Biological Applications

“…9 Fluorinated soft NPs have been, indeed, proposed as drug delivery systems for doxorubicin. 10,11 An additional feature of fluorinated materials, including AuNPs, is that they may be easily engineered into contrast agents for 19 F magnetic resonance imaging, 12,13 and by combining this application with drug delivery, novel theranostic platforms may become available. 11 As far as monolayer protected AuNPs are concerned, the immiscibility of F-and H-thiolate ligands, arising from the lipophobicity of fluorocompounds, favors their self-sorting, with formation of domains, on the NPs surface.…”

Gold nanoparticles protected by fluorinated ligands: Syntheses, properties and applications

“…Also for this system the toxicity was evaluated in HeLa cells. At a nanoparticles concentration in the range 0.6 µM -10 µM, the 95% of the cells were found to be viable after uptake of the nanoparticles as determined by cytofluorimetric analysis [36]. However, considering that for MRI applications a very high concentration of equivalent F nuclei (10 16 -10 19 atoms per voxel) has to be reach in the biological system, this investigation should be extended to higher NP concentrations.…”

“…Secondly, fluorinated nanoparticles may also act as reporter units by themselves, owing to the presence of the magnetically active 19 F nuclei that can be exploited in developing 19 F MRI contrast agents [36].…”

“…To this end the gold nanoparticles 11a and 11b with quasi equivalent fluorine atoms were synthesized and analyzed in phantom experiments using a clinical setup [36]. With the nanoparticles 11a, a signal to noise ratio of 5.7 could be obtained using a concentration of nanoparticles equal to 1.9 mg/ml.…”

Perfluoroalkylated poly(oxyethylene) thiols: Synthesis, adsorption dynamics and surface activity at the air/water interface, and bubble stabilization behaviour

“…In the latter case, the SAMs were obtained from partially fluorinated disulfides with a poly(oxyethylene) (POE) chain grafted in terminal position (Scheme 1a) [3]. More recently, other POE fluorinated thiols have been used as ligands to protect gold nanoparticles in contrast agents for 19 F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (Scheme 1b) [4]. The POE chains were intended to increase the dispersibility of gold nanoparticles grafted with perfluoroalkyl (F-alkyl) chains via the thiol function.…”