State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, 2 Sipailou Road, Nanjing, 210096, P. R. China.
Small. 2019 Mar;15(11):e1804575. doi: 10.1002/smll.201804575. Epub 2019 Feb 14.
Herein, water-dispersible carbon nano-onion clusters (CNOCs) with an average hydrodynamic size of ≈90 nm are prepared by simply sonicating candle soot in a mixture of oxidizing acid. The obtained CNOCs have high photothermal conversion efficiency (57.5%), excellent aqueous dispersibility (stable in water for more than a year without precipitation), and benign biocompatibility. After polyethylenimine (PEI) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) modification, the resultant CNOCs-PEI-PEG have a high photothermal conversion efficiency (56.5%), and can realize after-wash photothermal cancer cell ablation due to their ultrahigh cellular uptake (21.3 pg/cell), which is highly beneficial for the selective ablation of cancer cells via light-triggered intracellular heat generation. More interestingly, the cellular uptake of CNOCs-PEI-PEG is so high that the internalized nanoagents can be directly observed under a microscope without fluorescent labeling. Besides, in vivo experiments reveal that CNOCs-PEI-PEG can be used for photothermal/photoacoustic dual-modal imaging-guided photothermal therapy after intravenous administration. Furthermore, CNOCs-PEI-PEG can be efficiently cleared from the mouse body within a week, ensuring their excellent long-term biosafety. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the first example of using candle soot as raw material to prepare water-dispersible onion-like carbon nanomaterials for cancer theranostics is represented herein.
在此，通过简单地将烛烟在混合氧化酸中超声处理，制备出平均水动力尺寸约为 90nm 的水分散性碳纳米洋葱簇（CNOCs）。所得到的 CNOCs 具有高光热转换效率（57.5%）、优异的水分散性（在水中稳定超过一年而无沉淀）和良好的生物相容性。经过聚乙烯亚胺（PEI）和聚乙二醇（PEG）修饰后，所得的 CNOCs-PEI-PEG 具有高光热转换效率（56.5%），并且由于其超高的细胞摄取率（21.3pg/细胞），可以实现洗涤后光热癌细胞消融，这有利于通过光触发细胞内产热选择性地消融癌细胞。更有趣的是，CNOCs-PEI-PEG 的细胞摄取率非常高，即使没有荧光标记，也可以在显微镜下直接观察到被内化的纳米颗粒。此外，体内实验表明，CNOCs-PEI-PEG 可以在静脉给药后用于光热/光声双模成像引导的光热治疗。此外，CNOCs-PEI-PEG 可以在一周内从小鼠体内高效清除，保证其具有优异的长期生物安全性。据作者所知，这是首次使用烛烟作为原料制备用于癌症治疗的水分散性洋葱状碳纳米材料的实例。
