Issue 74, 2015

Thermal decomposition based synthesis of Ag-In-S/ZnS quantum dots and their chlorotoxin-modified micelles for brain tumor cell targeting

Abstract

Cadmium-free silver-indium-sulfide (Ag-In-S or AIS) chalcopyrite quantum dots (QDs) as well as their core–shell structures (AIS/ZnS QDs) are being paid significant attention in biomedical applications because of their low toxicity and excellent optical properties. Here we report a simple and safe synthetic system to prepare high quality AIS and AIS/ZnS QDs using thermal decomposition. The synthetic system simply involves heating a mixture of silver acetate, indium acetate, and oleic acid in dodecanethiol at 170 °C to produce AIS QDs with a 13% quantum yield (QY). After ZnS shell growth, the produced AIS/ZnS QDs achieve a 41% QY. To facilitate phase transfer and bioconjugation of AIS/ZnS QDs for cellular imaging, these QDs were loaded into the core of PLGA–PEG (5kDa : 5kDa) based micelles to form AIS/ZnS QD-micelles. Cellular imaging studies showed that chlorotoxin-conjugated QD-micelles can be specifically internalized into U-87 brain tumor cells. This work discloses that the scalable synthesis of AIS/ZnS QDs and the facile surface/interface chemistry for phase transfer and bioconjugation of these QDs may open an avenue for the produced QD-micelles to be applied to the detection of endogenous targets expressed on brain tumor cells, or more broadly to cell- or tissue-based diagnosis and therapy.

Graphical abstract: Thermal decomposition based synthesis of Ag-In-S/ZnS quantum dots and their chlorotoxin-modified micelles for brain tumor cell targeting

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Jun 2015
Accepted
07 Jul 2015
First published
08 Jul 2015

RSC Adv., 2015,5, 60612-60620

Author version available

Thermal decomposition based synthesis of Ag-In-S/ZnS quantum dots and their chlorotoxin-modified micelles for brain tumor cell targeting

S. Chen, M. Ahmadiantehrani, N. G. Publicover, K. W. Hunter and X. Zhu, RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 60612 DOI: 10.1039/C5RA11250H

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