The majority of near-infrared (NIR) fluorophores are
organic molecules
that show significant overlap between the excitation and emission
spectra and therefore exhibit high fluorescence backgrounds during
in vivo imaging. Recently, cyanine dyes with a large Stokes shift
have shown great promise for NIR imaging but often undergo rapid photodegradation
and nonspecific protein adsorption. Alternatively, fluorescence resonance
energy transfer (FRET) is a promising technique to generate a larger
gap between the excitation and emission maxima and thus can reduce
the background signal. Here, we report the rational design of FRET-based
polymeric nanoparticles for NIR and FRET imaging. The particles were
assembled from diblock copolymers of poly(d,l-lactic-co-glycolic acid) and maleimide-activated poly(ethylene
glycol), which were also encapsulated with both the donor (1,1′-dioctadecyl-3,3,3′,3′-tetramethylindodicarbocyanine)
and acceptor (1,1′-dioctadecyl-3,3,3′,3′-tetramethylindotricarbocyanine)
fluorophores. Because of their extreme hydrophobicity, thousands of
fluorophores could be encapsulated inside a single particle without
causing leakage. FRET resulted in a large Stokes shift (>100 nm)
of
the emission maxima, and the transfer efficiency could be fine-tuned
by further adjusting the doping ratio of the donor and acceptor fluorophores.
The optimized formulation was less than 100 nm in size, brighter than
quantum dots, stable in biological media, and demonstrated similar
biodistribution to most nanomaterials. Additional animal phantom studies
demonstrated that the FRET imaging platform developed could have far-reaching
applications in optical imaging.