Dual-Mode Fluorescence and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Nanoprobe Based on Aromatic Amphiphilic Copolymer Encapsulated CdSe@CdS and FeO.

Nanoparticles exhibiting good biocompatibility and multifunctional optical, magnetic, and reactive properties are essential materials for the construction of next generation theranostics platforms. The core-shell structured CdSe@CdS is one of few semiconductor quantum dots (QD) that shows ideal photoluminescence for biological application including unity quantum yields, identical photoluminescence for ensembles and single dot, nonblinking, and antibleaching. However, overcoming toxicity concerns from Cd is still a great challenge for promoting the practical medical application of the CdSe@CdS QD. Besides, the high quality luminescent and superparamagnetic nanoparticles at present are basically hydrophobic, which implies that the phase transfer of these functional nanoparticles into aqueous phase is the primary step to enable their biomedical application. Herein, we have developed a facile protocol to fabricate highly biocompatible nanoparticles showing both modulated luminescent and magnetic properties via a one-step self-assembling of amphiphilic block copolyarylene ether nitriles (amPEN), oleic acid stabilized CdSe@CdS QD, and FeO superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SP) in microemulsion system. Benefiting from the aromatic backbone structure of amPEN and its strong hydrophobic interaction with surface capping agent of QD/SP, the fabricated hybrid nanoprobe exhibits quite competitive colloids stability as well as fluorescent/magnetic properties, which ensures its application for in vitro fluorescence and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of cancer cells.