Dye-doped silica nanoparticles as luminescent organized systems for nanomedicine
The ability to find synergic solutions is the core of scientific research and scientific advancement. This is particularly true for medicine, where multimodal imaging and theranostic tools represent the frontier research. Nanotechnology, which by its very nature is multidisciplinary, has opened up t...
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| Published in | Chemical Society reviews Vol. 43; no. 12; pp. 4243 - 4268 |
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| Main Authors | , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
21.06.2014
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | The ability to find synergic solutions is the core of scientific research and scientific advancement. This is particularly true for medicine, where multimodal imaging and theranostic tools represent the frontier research. Nanotechnology, which by its very nature is multidisciplinary, has opened up the way to the engineering of new organized materials endowed with improved performances. In particular, merging nanoparticles and luminescent signalling can lead to the creation of unique tools for the design of inexpensive, hand-held diagnostic and theranostic kits. In this wide scenario, dye-doped silica nanoparticles constitute very effective nanoplatforms to obtain efficient luminescent, stable, biocompatible and targeted agents for biomedical applications. In this review we discuss the state of the art in the field of luminescent silica-based nanoparticles for medical imaging, starting with an overview of the most common synthetic approaches to these materials. Trying to rationalize the presentation of this extremely multifaceted and complex subject, we have gathered significant examples of systems applied in cancer research, also discussing those that take a multifunctional approach, including theranostic structures. Nanoprobes designed for applications that do not include cancer are a minor part, but interesting achievements have been published and we present a selection of these in the subsequent section. To conclude, we propose a debate on the advantages of creating chemosensors based on luminescent silica nanoparticles. This is far from easy but is a particularly valuable goal in the medical field and therefore subject to extensive research worldwide.
This review summarizes developments and applications of luminescent dye doped silica nanoparticles as versatile organized systems for nanomedicine. |
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| Bibliography: | Nelsi Zaccheroni studied and obtained her PhD in Chemical Sciences (1997) at the University of Bologna (Italy), where she has a permanent position as Assistant Professor in Chemistry since January 1999. She spent one year (1997) as a postdoctoral fellow within a TMR-CEE project at the University College of Dublin (Ireland) where she started to approach the study of nanomaterials. Her research interests are now mainly focused on luminescent systems for imaging and sensing, both molecular and nanostructured in particular based on silica, metal and core-shell multimaterial nanoparticles. Marco Montalti obtained his PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2001 at the University of Bologna after being research assistant at Tulane University. In 2002 he started, as assistant professor, his independent research career in the field of fluorescent silica and metal nanoparticles. His research group works on the design of (nano-) systems and devices based on the integration of molecular, supramolecular and nanostructured functional components for application in life and material sciences. Part of this research is dedicated to methods and tools for real time and real space investigation of biological and chemical processes. Enrico Rampazzo was born in Verona in 1973. He completed his PhD at the University of Padua under the supervision of Umberto Tonellato and Fabrizio Mancin. He was a FIRB young researcher and a postdoctoral fellow with Luca Prodi and Marco Montalti at the Photochemical Nanosciences Laboratory of the University of Bologna (Italy), where he is now a fix-term researcher. His research focusses on the synthesis of luminescent dyes, sensors and (electro)luminescent systems based on dye doped silica nanoparticles for the development of sensors and labels. Professor Luca Prodi received his PhD in 1992. Appointed researcher in 1992 and associated professor in 2004, in 2006 he was promoted to full professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bologna. His research activity is focussed on the synthesis and characterization of photo- and electrochemi-luminescent labels and sensors, using the supramolecular approach for the analyte recognition and the signal transduction steps. In this context, he is also actively working on the synthesis and characterization of metal and silica nanoparticles, in order to obtain more efficient sensors and labels through signal amplification, mainly for bio-medical applications. He is inventor of 4 patents and a co-founder of two spin-off companies. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 ObjectType-Review-3 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0306-0012 1460-4744 1460-4744 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c3cs60433k |