title: Fluorescent Poly(glycerol-co-sebacate) Acrylate Nanoparticles for Stem Cell Labeling and Longitudinal Tracking.
abstract: The stable presence of fluorophores within the biocompatible and biodegradable elastomer poly(glycerol-co-sebacate) acrylate (PGSA) is critical for monitoring the transplantation, performance, and degradation of the polymers in vivo. However, current methods such as physically entrapping the fluorophores in the polymer matrix or providing a fluorescent coating suffer from rapid leakage of fluorophores. Covalent conjugation of fluorophores with the polymers and the subsequent core-cross-linking are proposed here to address this challenge. Taking rhodamine as the model dye and PGSA nanoparticles (NPs) as the model platform, we successfully showed that the synthesized rhodamine-conjugated PGSA (PGSAR) NPs only released less than 30% rhodamine at day 28, whereas complete release of dye occurred for rhodamine-encapsulated PGSA (PGSA-p-R) NPs at day 7 and 57.49% rhodamine was released out for the un-cross-linked PGSAR NPs at day 28. More excitingly, PGSAR NPs showed a strong quantum yield enhancement (26.24-fold) of the fluorophores, which was due to the hydrophobic environment within PGSAR NPs and the restricted rotation of (6-diethylamino-3H-xanthen-3-ylidene) diethyl group in rhodamine after the conjugation and core-cross-linking. The stable presence of dye in the NPs and enhanced fluorescence allowed a longitudinal tracking of stem cells both in vitro and in vivo for at least 28 days.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) , 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, P. R. China.|School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Lifeng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) , 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, P. R. China.|School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Keming
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.|Key Laboratory for Organic Electronics and Information Displays, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications , Nanjing 210046, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiaochun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Yiyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Shiying
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wiraja
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Cangjie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) , 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.
authors.forename: Mingfeng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) , 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiaochen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech) , 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7004-6408
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , 70 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637457, Singapore.|NTU-Northwestern Institute for Nanomedicine, Nanyang Technological University , 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore.
authors.forename: Chenjie
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8278-3912
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000179:Acrylates; D005990:Glycerol; D053758:Nanoparticles; D011108:Polymers; D013234:Stem Cells
chemical_list: D000179:Acrylates; D011108:Polymers; C043941:polyglycerol; D005990:Glycerol
keywords: longitudinal tracking; nanoparticles; poly(glycerol-co-sebacate) acrylate; rhodamine; stem cell labeling