Abstract
The need for novel design strategies for fluorescent nanomaterials to improve our understanding of biological activities at the molecular level is increasing rapidly. Dye-doped fluorescent silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) emerge with great potential for developing fluorescence imaging techniques as a novel and ideal platform for the monitoring of living cells and the whole body. Organic dye-containing fluorescent SiNPs exhibit many advantages: they have excellent biocompatibility, are non-toxic, highly hydrophilic, optically transparent, size-tunable and easily modified with various biomolecules. The outer silica shell matrix protects fluorophores from outside chemical reaction factors and provides a hydrophilic shell for the insoluble nanoparticles, which enhances the photo-stability and biocompatibility of the organic fluorescent dyes. Here, we give a summary of the synthesis, characteristics and applications of fluorescent SiNPs for non-invasive fluorescence bioimaging in live cells and in vivo. Additionally, the challenges and perspectives of SiNPs are also discussed. We prospect that the further development of these nanoparticles will lead to an exciting breakthrough in the understanding of biological processes.
Highlights
Living cells and the human body are very complex systems because of the high diversity in organic composition and distinct temporal-spatial variation in metabolism
Traditional fluorescent dye-doped silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) are used in the bioimaging field for the unique photo-stability, biocompatibility and easy modification of their surface
By changing the ratio of the dye and dye and nanoparticles for simultaneous optimization of NIR and PA imaging, they found that nanoparticles for simultaneous optimization of NIR and PA imaging, they found that mesoporous mesoporous SiNPs loaded with 80 μM dyes generated both a moderate NIR emission and PA
Summary
Living cells and the human body are very complex systems because of the high diversity in organic composition and distinct temporal-spatial variation in metabolism. After overcoming the above difficulties, we expect to achieve these as follows: small size to enter cells for bioimaging, high sensitivity for effective detection, fast response to monitor the life metabolism of targets, high abundancy, non-toxicity, good dispersibility in the biological environment, resistant to metabolic disintegration and photobleaching, high selectivity in the extremely complex organism [12,13,14] With these properties, such as the excellent biocompatibility, non-toxicity, high hydrophily, optical transparency, tunable size and ease to covalently attach multifarious biomolecules (e.g., DNA, peptides, antibodies, RNA, proteins, etc.) to their surface, different fluorescent silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have been widely used as an extremely significant platform to acquire more applicable bioimaging probes in living cells and the entire body [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. The challenges and perspectives of functionalized fluorescent SiNPs will be discussed
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