High fluorescent and stable semiconductor quantum dots for red blood cells labeling

Abstract

We present a simple and efficient method for marking living human red blood cells using CdS (Cadmium Sulfide) quantum dots (QDs). The nanocrystals were obtained via colloidal synthesis in aqueous medium with final pH=7 using sodium polyphosphate as the stabilizing agent. The methodology implementation is simple, do not requires additional capping layers nor narrow size QDs distribution. The synthesized nanoparticles were conjugated to monoclonal A anti-body. The resulting conjugates QDs/anti-A were incubated with human erythrocytes of blood groups A and O for 30 min at 37°C. The living cells in contact with the quantum dots maintained their properties for several days showing the low level of citotoxicity of the quantum dots. The conjugation of CdS QDs/anti-A show simultaneous red and green fluorescence when excited with 543 and 488 nm respectively. The efficiency of the conjugation QDs/anti-body to the erythrocytes, for each system, was monitored by confocal microscopy. The comparative analysis of the micrographs was done with the luminescence intensity maps of the samples obtained under constant capture conditions, such as, pinhole, filters, beam splitters and photomultiplier gain. The conjugates QDs/anti-A intensely marked group A erythrocytes and did not show any luminescence for group O erythrocytes, showing the sensitivity of the labeling procedure. In conclusion, we show the viability of the use of high luminescent and stable quantum dots as fluorescent labels for human erythrocytes with a methodology of simple implementation and the possibility to use them to distinguish different blood groups.