Sixiang Shi^{1, #}, Feng Chen^{2, #}, Shreya Goel¹, Stephen A. Graves³, Haiming Luo², Charles P. Theuer⁴, Jonathan W. Engle³, Weibo Cai^{1, 2, 3, 5,} *

Nano-Micro Lett. (2018) 10: 65

First Online: 14 June 2018 (Article)

DOI:10.1007/s40820-018-0216-2

Silica nanoparticles have been one of the most promising nanosystems for biomedical applications due to their facile surface chemistry and non-toxic nature. However, it is still challenging to effectively deliver them into tumor sites and non-invasively visualize their in vivo biodistribution with excellent sensitivity and accuracy for effective cancer diagnosis. In this study, we design a yolk/shell structured silica nanosystem ⁶⁴Cu-NOTA-QD@HMSN-PEG-TRC105, which can be employed for tumor vasculature targeting and dual-modality PET/optical imaging, leading to superior targeting specificity, excellent imaging capability and more reliable diagnostic outcomes. By combining vasculature targeting, pH-sensitive drug delivery and dual-modality imaging into a single platform, as-designed yolk/shell structured silica nanosystems may be employed for the future image-guided tumor-targeted drug delivery, to further enable cancer theranostics.

Keywords

Hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticle (HMSN); Quantum dot (QD); Molecular imaging; Positron emission tomography (PET); Optical imaging; CD105/endoglin