Facile Synthesis of Gd-Functionalized Gold Nanoclusters as Potential MRI/CT Contrast Agents

• Published in: Nanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 6; no. 4; p. 65
• Main Authors: Le, Wenjun, Cui, Shaobin, Chen, Xin, Zhu, Huanhuan, Chen, Bingdi, Cui, Zheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 09.04.2016; MDPI
• Subjects: Amino acids; Biocompatibility; bovine serum albumin; Computation; computed tomography; Computer aided tomography; contrast agent; Contrast agents; Gold; gold nanocluster; Imaging; Light scattering; Magnetic resonance imaging; Nanomaterials; Nanostructure; Radiation; Tomography; China; computed tomography; magnetic resonance imaging; gold nanocluster; bovine serum albumin; contrast agent
• ISSN: 2079-4991; 2079-4991
• DOI: 10.3390/nano6040065

Multi-modal imaging plays a key role in the earlier detection of disease. In this work, a facile bioinspired method was developed to synthesize Gd-functionalized gold nanoclusters (Gd-Au NCs). The Gd-Au NCs exhibit a uniform size, with an average size of 5.6 nm in dynamic light scattering (DLS), which is a bit bigger than gold clusters (3.74 nm, DLS), while the fluorescent properties of Gd-Au NCs are almost the same as that of Au NCs. Moreover, the Gd-Au NCs exhibit a high longitudinal relaxivity value (r1) of 22.111 s per mM of Gd in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), which is six times higher than that of commercial Magnevist (A complex of gadolinium with a chelating agent, diethylenetriamine penta-acetic acid, Gd-DTPA, r1 = 3.56 mM ·s ). Besides, as evaluated by nano single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and computed tomography (CT) the Gd-Au NCs have a potential application as CT contrast agents because of the Au element. Finally, the Gd-Au NCs show little cytotoxicity, even when the Au concentration is up to 250 μM. Thus, the Gd-Au NCs can act as multi-modal imaging contrast agents.