Department of Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and iChem, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
College of Physics Science and Technology, Hebei University, Baoding, China.
Nat Nanotechnol. 2021 Sep;16(9):1011-1018. doi: 10.1038/s41565-021-00922-3. Epub 2021 Jun 10.
Persistent luminescence is not affected by background autofluorescence, and thus holds the promise of high-contrast bioimaging. However, at present, persistent luminescent materials for in vivo imaging are mainly bulk crystals characterized by a non-uniform size and morphology, inaccessible core-shell structures and short emission wavelengths. Here we report a series of X-ray-activated, lanthanide-doped nanoparticles with an extended emission lifetime in the second near-infrared window (NIR-II, 1,000-1,700 nm). Core-shell engineering enables a tunable NIR-II persistent luminescence, which outperforms NIR-II fluorescence in signal-to-noise ratios and the accuracy of in vivo multiplexed encoding and multilevel encryption, as well as in resolving mouse abdominal vessels, tumours and ureters in deep tissue (~2-4 mm), with up to fourfold higher signal-to-noise ratios and a threefold greater sharpness. These rationally designed nanoparticles also allow the high-contrast multiplexed imaging of viscera and multimodal NIR-II persistent luminescence-magnetic resonance-positron emission tomography imaging of murine tumours.
持续发光不受背景自发荧光的影响，因此有望实现高对比度的生物成像。然而，目前，用于体内成像的持续发光材料主要是块状晶体，其特点是尺寸和形态不均匀、无法获得核壳结构以及发射波长较短。在这里，我们报告了一系列 X 射线激活的、镧系掺杂的纳米粒子，它们在近红外二区（NIR-II，1000-1700nm）具有延长的发射寿命。核壳工程使可调谐的近红外二区持续发光成为可能，其在信噪比和体内多路复用编码和多级加密的准确性方面优于近红外二区荧光，在分辨深度组织（~2-4mm）中的小鼠腹部血管、肿瘤和输尿管方面也更胜一筹，其信噪比提高了四倍，清晰度提高了三倍。这些经过合理设计的纳米粒子还可以实现高对比度的内脏多路复用成像以及多模态近红外二区持续发光-磁共振-正电子发射断层成像对小鼠肿瘤的成像。
