Singlet oxygen-generating from fluorescence probes based on denatured bovine serum albumin-conjugated CdTe quantum dots and photosensitizer Chlorin e6

Based on the excellent optical properties of quantum dots (QDs), a simple and efficient method was proposed and established to produce a singlet oxygen activating QDs-denatured Bovine Serum Albumin (dBSA)-Chlorin e6 (Ce6) bioprobe. In this work, a quick synthesis of water-soluble CdTe QDs was accomplished and showed a good linear fit between synthetic heating duration and its maximum fluorescence emission wavelength. Moreover, dBSA which is a convenient and widely used agent was employed as a bridge to conjugate the selective CdTe QDs with a suitable emitting wavelength and photosensitizer Ce6, simply using N-ethyl-N-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide and N-hydroxy succinimide as coupling agents. UV–Vis, fluorescence, and IR spectroscopy confirmed the successful conjugation of QDs and Ce6. The as-produced QDs-dBSA-Ce6 bioconjugates demonstrated an effective fluorescence resonance energy transfer efficiency of as high as 0.90, which also proved to be well conserved of its singlet oxygen-generating in oxidation–extraction photometry tests and might be a potential bioprobe in the research of photo dynamic therapy.