Zuo Pengli, Peng Jun, Yao Yuyang, Tan Wei, Cheng Lan, Zhang Jinyu, Lu Xiuhua
Central Laboratory, Linyi Central Hospital, Yishui County, 17 Jiankang Road, Linyi, 276400, Shandong, China.
R&D Centre for Multimodal Nanocontrast Agents of Jining Medical University, Jining, 272067, Shandong, People's Republic of China.
J Fluoresc. 2025 May;35(5):3061-3069. doi: 10.1007/s10895-024-03725-6. Epub 2024 May 8.
Due to the unique chemical and biomedical properties of carbon dots (CDs), they have increasingly obtained the attention in many research fields, for example, bioimaging, fluorescence sensing, and drug delivery, etc. Recently, it was found that, under light excitation, CDs can also be exploited as a novel photosensitizer to prepare reactive oxygen species (ROS), which expand their applications in the field of photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment. Nevertheless, the high cost and complex fabrication approach of CDs significantly limit their applications. To address this issue, bottom-up routes usually utilize sustainable and inexpensive carbon precursor as starting materials, employed N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) or ethanol as an environmental-friendly solvent. Bottom-up approach was energy efficient, and the purification process was relatively simple by dialysis. Therefore, carbon dots (CDs) were facilely fabricated in a one-pot solvothermal process using 1-aminoanthraquinone as a precursor, and their application as photosensitizers for in vitro antitumor cells, especially photodynamic therapy (PDT) was established. Then the photophysical and nanoscale dimensions properties of the fabricated CDs were characterized via TEM, UV-visible, fluorescence, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The synthesized N-doped CDs can easily dissolve in water, possess very low biotoxicity, yellow-light emission (maximum peak at 587 nm). More importantly, PDT studies demonstrated that the obtained CDs possess a high singlet oxygen yield of 35%, and exhibit significant phototoxicity to cancer cells upon 635 nm laser irradiation. These studies highlight that N-doped CDs can be facilely synthesized from only one precursor, and are a potentially novel theranostic agent for in vivo PDT.
由于碳点（CDs）具有独特的化学和生物医学特性，它们在许多研究领域越来越受到关注，例如生物成像、荧光传感和药物递送等。最近，人们发现，在光激发下，碳点还可以用作新型光敏剂来产生活性氧（ROS），这扩展了它们在癌症治疗的光动力疗法领域的应用。然而，碳点的高成本和复杂的制备方法显著限制了它们的应用。为了解决这个问题，自下而上的方法通常使用可持续且廉价的碳前驱体作为起始材料，采用N，N-二甲基甲酰胺（DMF）或乙醇作为环境友好型溶剂。自下而上的方法能源效率高，并且通过透析进行的纯化过程相对简单。因此，以1-氨基蒽醌为前驱体，通过一锅溶剂热法轻松制备了碳点（CDs），并确立了它们作为体外抗肿瘤细胞光敏剂的应用，尤其是光动力疗法（PDT）。然后通过透射电子显微镜（TEM）、紫外可见光谱、荧光光谱和傅里叶变换红外光谱（FT-IR）对制备的碳点的光物理和纳米尺度尺寸特性进行了表征。合成的氮掺杂碳点可以很容易地溶解在水中，具有非常低的生物毒性，发出黄光（最大峰值在587nm）。更重要的是，光动力疗法研究表明，所获得的碳点具有35%的高单线态氧产率，并且在635nm激光照射下对癌细胞表现出显著的光毒性。这些研究突出表明，氮掺杂碳点可以仅由一种前驱体轻松合成，并且是一种潜在的用于体内光动力疗法的新型诊疗剂。
