title: Upconverting NIR Photons for Bioimaging.
abstract: Lanthanide-doped upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) possess uniqueanti-Stokes optical properties, in which low energy near-infrared (NIR) photons can beconverted into high energy UV, visible, shorter NIR emission via multiphoton upconversionprocesses. Due to the rapid development of synthesis chemistry, lanthanide-doped UCNPscan be fabricated with narrow distribution and tunable multi-color optical properties. Theseunique attributes grant them unique NIR-driven imaging/drug delivery/therapeuticapplications, especially in the cases of deep tissue environments. In this brief review, weintroduce both the basic concepts of and recent progress with UCNPs in material engineeringand theranostic applications in imaging, molecular delivery, and tumor therapeutics. The aimof this brief review is to address the most typical progress in basic mechanism, materialdesign as bioimaging tools.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. zhanjun.li@umassmed.edu.
authors.forename: Zhanjun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. yuanwei.zhang@umassmed.edu.
authors.forename: Yuanwei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. hla@umassmed.edu.
authors.forename: Hieu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: La
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. zzrichard123@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
authors.forename: Ghida
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: El-Banna
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. ywei22@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Yuzou
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA. gang.han@umassmed.edu.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Han
keywords: optical imaging; optical therapy; upconversion nanoparticles