In Vitro Cytotoxicity of Fluorescent Silica Nanoparticles Hybridized with Aggregation-Induced Emission Luminogens for Living Cell Imaging

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Yun Xia¹  Min Li²  Tao Peng²  Weijie Zhang²  Jun Xiong²  Qinggang Hu²  Zifang Song² 

[1] Department of General Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China; E-Mail:;Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China; E-Mails:

关键词: aggregation-induced emission;    fluorescent silica nanoparticles;    cytotoxicity;    cell imaging;    silole;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms14011080

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Fluorescent silica nanoparticles (FSNPs) can provide high-intensity and photostable fluorescent signals as a probe for biomedical analysis. In this study, FSNPs hybridized with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogens (namely FSNP-SD) were successfully fabricated by a surfactant-free sol-gel method. The FSNP-SD were spherical, monodisperse and uniform in size, with an average diameter of approximately 100 nm, and emitted strong fluorescence at the peak of 490 nm. The FSNP-SD selectively stained the cytoplasmic regions and were distributed in the cytoplasm. Moreover, they can stay inside cells, enabling the tacking of cells over a long period of time. The intracellular vesicles and multinucleated cells were increase gradually with the rise of FSNP-SD concentration. Both cell viability and survival only lost less than 20% when the cells were exposed to the high concentration of 100 μg/mL FSNP-SD. Additionally, the cell apoptosis and intracellular ROS assay indicated that FSNP-SD had no significant toxic effects at the maximum working concentration of 80 μg/mL. This study demonstrated that the FSNP-SD are promising biocompatible fluorescent probes for living cell imaging.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.