title: Recent advances of semiconducting polymer nanoparticles in in vivo molecular imaging.
abstract: Semiconducting polymer nanoparticles (SPNs) emerge as attractive molecular imaging nanoagents in living animals because of their excellent optical properties including large absorption coefficients, tunable optical properties and controllable dimensions, high photostability, and the use of organic and biologically inert components without toxic metals. This review summarizes the recent advances of these new organic nanoparticles in in vivo molecular imaging. The in vivo biocompatibility of SPNs is discussed first in details, followed by examples of their applications ranging from sentinel lymph node mapping and tumor imaging to long-term cell tracking, to drug toxicity and bacterial infection imaging for fluorescence, bioluminescence, chemiluminescence and photoacoustic imaging in living animals. The utility of SPNs for designing smart activatable probes for real-time in vivo imaging is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology School of Medicine, Stanford University, USA; School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Kanyi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pu
authors.affiliation: Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology School of Medicine, Stanford University, USA.
authors.forename: Niladri
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chattopadhyay
authors.affiliation: Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology School of Medicine, Stanford University, USA. Electronic address: jrao@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Jianghong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry*; D057054:Molecular Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015335:Molecular Probes; D015394:Molecular Structure; D061088:Photoacoustic Techniques; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D045663:Quantum Dots / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D015335:Molecular Probes; D011108:Polymers
keywords: Molecular imaging; Nanomedicine; Nanoparticle; Polymer