Lanthanide‐doped hollow nanomaterials as theranostic agents

Abstract

The field of theranostics has sprung up to achieve personalized medicine. The theranostics fuses diagnostic and therapeutic functions, empowering early diagnosis, targeted drug delivery, and real-time monitoring of treatment effect into one step. One particularly attractive class of nanomaterials for theranostic application is lanthanide-doped hollow nanomaterials (LDHNs). Because of the existence of lanthanide ions, LDHNs show outstanding fluorescent and paramagnetic properties, enabling them to be used as multimodal bioimaging agents. Synchronously, the huge interior cavities of LDHNs are able to be applied as efficacious tools for storage and delivery of therapeutic agents. The LDHNs can be divided into two types based on difference of component: single-phase lanthanide-doped hollow nanomaterials and lanthanide-doped hollow nanocomposites. We describe the synthesis of first kind of nanomaterials by use of hard template, soft template, template-free, and self-sacrificing template method. For lanthanide-doped hollow nanocomposites, we divide the preparation strategies into three kinds (one-step, two-step, and multistep method) according to the synthetic procedures. Furthermore, we also illustrate the potential bioapplications of these LDHNs, including biodetection, imaging (fluorescent imaging and magnetic resonance imaging), drug/gene delivery, and other therapeutic applications.

Lanthanide light for biology and medical diagnosis

“…This class of material is vast and any combination of a lanthanide luminescent probe with hollow nanospheres, carbon nanotubes [42], gold [29] or silica nanoparticles, or porous materials including zeolites or coordination polymers is feasible and can be adapted to any specific problem [43].…”

Simultaneous Enhancement of Upconversion and Downshifting Luminescence via Plasmonic Structure

“…Owing to the f−f internal orbital transition of Tb 3+ , the radiative transitions from the 5 D 4 level to the 7 D 3,4,5,6 levels exhibit peaks at 489, 545, 586, and 621 nm, respectively (Figure 5c). 58 DMIM structure achieved an enhancement factor of 29 at 545 nm. The large enhancement of the DS luminescence originated from the strong resonant coupling with the MIM cavity mode.…”

Three-dimensional controlled growth of monodisperse sub-50 nm heterogeneous nanocrystals

“…In particular, alkaline rare-earth fluoride (AREF 4 ) nanocrystals 10 11 12 , including hexagonal-phase β-NaYF 4 , β-NaGdF 4 , β-NaNdF 4 or β-NaLuF 4 are used in full-colour displays 12 13 , photovoltaics 14 , security inks 15 , forensic science 16 , autofluorescence-free biomolecular sensing 17 18 19 , multimodal in vivo bio-imaging (fluorescence, magnetic resonance imaging, X-ray, SPECT and so on.) 20 and theranostics 17 21 22 23 . A trial-and-error approach is frequently used to produce nanoparticles with spherical, rod-like or other shapes 24 25 26 by varying dopant concentrations and/or constituent materials 27 , reaction time and temperature 28 29 30 31 .…”