GdIII functionalized gold nanorods for multimodal imaging applications

Hongmei Sun; Qinghai Yuan; Baohua Zhang; Kelong Ai; Pengguo Zhang; Lehui Lu

doi:10.1039/C0NR00929F

Gd^III functionalized gold nanorods for multimodal imaging applications†

Hongmei Sun,^ab Qinghai Yuan,*^c Baohua Zhang,^a Kelong Ai,^a Pengguo Zhang^c and Lehui Lu*^a

* Corresponding authors

^a State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, P. R. China
E-mail: lehuilu@ciac.jl.cn
Fax: +86-43185262406
Tel: +86-43185262418

^b Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

^c Department of Radiology, the Second Hospital of Jilin University Norman Bethune, Changchun, P. R. China
E-mail: yuanqinghai123@sina.com

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel noncovalent method for producing Gd^III-functionalized gold nanorods as multimodal contrast agents for MRI and CT imaging. The ligand is connected to the surface of the gold nanorods by a noncovalent bond making the Gd^III ions directly accessible to water molecules, and resulting in a longitudinal relaxivity as high as 21.3 mM⁻¹ s⁻¹. In addition, compared with spherical gold nanoparticles, gold nanorods have more binding sites for Gd^III ions due to their large surface-to-volume ratio. Benefiting from the advantages of the new type of carry material and the novel fabrication approach, the multimodal imaging probes exhibit a high longitudinal relaxivity r₁ on the order of 1.1 × 10⁷ mM⁻¹ s⁻¹ on a per-particle basis, which is 24 times higher than that of Gd^III-ion-functionalized spherical gold nanoparticles. Furthermore, CT imaging shows that such nanoprobes could induce an efficient contrast enhancement when the gold concentration is at least equal to 1.31 mg ml⁻¹. These results demonstrate that the as-prepared Gd functinalized gold nanorods could provide a new and versatile platform for the development of multimodal imaging probes.

This article is part of the themed collection: Optical Materials

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C0NR00929F
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 01 Dec 2010
Accepted: 08 Feb 2011
First published: 08 Mar 2011

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Nanoscale, 2011,3, 1990-1996

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Gd^III functionalized gold nanorods for multimodal imaging applications

H. Sun, Q. Yuan, B. Zhang, K. Ai, P. Zhang and L. Lu, Nanoscale, 2011, 3, 1990 DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00929F

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