Nile Red Derivative-Modified Nanostructure for Upconversion Luminescence Sensing and Intracellular Detection of Fe3+ and MR Imaging

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• 作者：Ruoyan Wei ; Zuwu Wei ; Lining Sun ; Jin Z. Zhang ; Jinliang Liu ; Xiaoqian Ge ; Liyi Shi
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：January 13, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：8
• 期：1
• 页码：400-410
• 全文大小：696K
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

Iron ion (Fe³⁺) which is the physiologically most abundant and versatile transition metal in biological systems, has been closely related to many certain cancers, metabolism, and dysfunction of organs, such as the liver, heart, and pancreas. In this Research Article, a novel Nile red derivative (NRD) fluorescent probe was synthesized and, in conjunction with polymer-modified core–shell upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs), demonstrated in the detection of Fe³⁺ ion with high sensitivity and selectivity. The core–shell UCNPs were surface modified using a synthesized PEGylated amphiphilic polymer (C₁₈PMH-mPEG), and the resulting mPEG modified core–shell UCNPs (mPEG-UCNPs) show good water solubility. The overall Fe³⁺-responsive upconversion luminescence nanostructure was fabricated by linking the NRD to the mPEG-UCNPs, denoted as mPEG-UCNPs-NRD. In the nanostructure, the core–shell UCNPs, NaYF₄:Yb,Er,Tm@NaGdF₄, serve as the energy donor while the Fe³⁺-responsive NRD as the energy acceptor, which leads to efficient luminescence resonance energy transfer (LRET). The mPEG-UCNPs-NRD nanostructure shows high selectivity and sensitivity for detecting Fe³⁺ in water. In addition, benefited from the good biocompatibility, the nanostructure was successfully applied for detecting Fe³⁺ in living cells based on upconversion luminescence (UCL) from the UCNPs. Furthermore, the doped Gd³⁺ ion in the UCNPs endows the mPEG-UCNPs-NRD nanostructure with effective T₁ signal enhancement, making it a potential magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent. This work demonstrates a simple yet powerful strategy to combine metal ion sensing with multimodal bioimaging based on upconversion luminescence for biomedical applications.