Abstract
Lanthanide-doped upconversion-luminescent nanoparticles (UCNPs), which can be excited by near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation to emit multiplex light, have been proven to be very useful for in vitro and in vivo molecular imaging studies. In comparison with the conventionally used down-conversion fluorescence imaging strategies, the NIR light excited luminescence of UCNPs displays high photostability, low cytotoxicity, little background auto-fluorescence, which allows for deep tissue penetration, making them attractive as contrast agents for biomedical imaging applications. In this review, we will mainly focus on the latest development of a new type of lanthanide-doped UCNP material and its main applications for in vitro and in vivo molecular imaging and we will also discuss the challenges and future perspectives.
Highlights
Molecular imaging is a brand new and currently upcoming technology, which allows people to non-invasively monitor the cellular functions or the biological processes in complicated living systems
In terms of superior biocompatibility and less cytotoxicity upon the surface modification, upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) can be used for promising biomedical applications, especially in the areas of molecular imaging, mostly owing to their unique optical properties, which can be excited with long wavelength NIR light from 795 to 980 nm, and such long wavelength light illumination can be converted into multiplexed emissions that span over a broad range from the UV to NIR region [32,33,34,35]
This review summarizes the latest advance of lanthanide doped UCNPs within the past few years, mainly concentrating on their bioapplication in molecular imaging in vitro and in living subjects
Summary
Molecular imaging is a brand new and currently upcoming technology, which allows people to non-invasively monitor the cellular functions or the biological processes in complicated living systems. Some other organic fluorophores including cyanine dyes, squaraine dyes and phthalocyanines derivatives that function in the near infrared (NIR) region have been extensively used for the non-invasively monitoring of gene expression [11], in vivo cell trafficking [12], enzyme activities identification [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21], early stage of disease screening and new drug development [22,23] in vitro and in living subjects, mostly attributed to their promising advantages of reduced light scattering, high tissue penetration and relatively minimal auto-fluorescence from biological samples. UCNPs nano-crystals, which was not released into the living environments and, greatly minimized their potential cytotoxicity [54]
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