1. Folic acid functionalized ZnO quantum dots for targeted cancer cell imaging
- Author
-
Hui Ding, Huan-Ming Xiong, and Ying-Ying Ma
- Subjects
Materials science ,Cell Survival ,Confocal ,Nanoparticle ,Bioengineering ,Folic Acid ,Neoplasms ,Quantum Dots ,Humans ,General Materials Science ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering ,Microscopy, Confocal ,Mechanical Engineering ,HEK 293 cells ,technology, industry, and agriculture ,General Chemistry ,equipment and supplies ,In vitro ,HEK293 Cells ,Membrane ,Biochemistry ,Mechanics of Materials ,Quantum dot ,Luminescent Measurements ,Cancer cell ,MCF-7 Cells ,Biophysics ,Zinc Oxide ,Conjugate - Abstract
Aqueous stable luminescent ZnO quantum dots (QDs) were successfully synthesized with primary amine groups on the surface, which were designed to conjugate with folic acid (FA) to produce the final ZnO-FA QDs. Such ZnO-FA QDs were able to target some specific cancer cells with overexpressed FA receptors on the membranes and thus differentiate the MCF-7 cancer cells from the normal 293T cells. The nanoparticle uptaking experiments by different cells were carried out in parallel and tracked by confocal laser microscopy dynamically. The results confirmed the specificity of our ZnO-FA QDs towards the FA-receptor overexpressed cancer cells, which had potential for diagnosing cancers in vitro.
- Published
- 2015