Facile Synthesis of Gd-Functionalized Gold Nanoclusters as Potential MRI/CT Contrast Agents.
Multi-modal imaging plays a key role in the earlier detection of disease. In this work, a facile bioinspired method was developed to synthesize Gd-functionalized gold nanoclusters (Gd-Au NCs). The Gd-Au NCs exhibit a uniform size, with an average size of 5.6 nm in dynamic light scattering (DLS), which is a bit bigger than gold clusters (3.74 nm, DLS), while the fluorescent properties of Gd-Au NCs are almost the same as that of Au NCs. Moreover, the Gd-Au NCs exhibit a high longitudinal relaxivity value (r1) of 22.111 s-1per mM of Gd in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), which is six times higher than that of commercial Magnevist (A complex of gadolinium with a chelating agent, diethylenetriamine penta-acetic acid, Gd-DTPA, r1 = 3.56 mM-1·s-1). Besides, as evaluated by nano single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and computed tomography (CT) the Gd-Au NCs have a potential application as CT contrast agents because of the Au element. Finally, the Gd-Au NCs show little cytotoxicity, even when the Au concentration is up to 250 μM. Thus, the Gd-Au NCs can act as multi-modal imaging contrast agents.
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. lwj2120@126.com.
Wenjun
W
Le
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. cbin1991@hotmail.com.
Shaobin
S
Cui
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. xinchen513@yahoo.com.
Xin
X
Chen
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. zhuhuanhuan132@163.com.
Huanhuan
H
Zhu
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. inanochen@tongji.edu.cn.|State Key Lab of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. inanochen@tongji.edu.cn.
Bingdi
B
Chen
The Institute for Translational Nanomedicine, Shanghai East Hospital, The Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China. zheng_cui@tongji.edu.cn.|Department of Pathology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 28780, USA. zheng_cui@tongji.edu.cn.
Zheng
Z
Cui
bovine serum albumin; computed tomography; contrast agent; gold nanocluster; magnetic resonance imaging