Abstract
The overproduction of hydrogen peroxide is implicated in the development of numerous diseases1,2,3,4 and there is currently great interest in developing contrast agents that can image hydrogen peroxide in vivo. In this report, we demonstrate that nanoparticles formulated from peroxalate esters and fluorescent dyes can image hydrogen peroxide in vivo with high specificity and sensitivity. The peroxalate nanoparticles image hydrogen peroxide by undergoing a three-component chemiluminescent reaction between hydrogen peroxide, peroxalate esters and fluorescent dyes. The peroxalate nanoparticles have several attractive properties for in vivo imaging, such as tunable wavelength emission (460–630 nm), nanomolar sensitivity for hydrogen peroxide and excellent specificity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species. The peroxalate nanoparticles were capable of imaging hydrogen peroxide in the peritoneal cavity of mice during a lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory response. We anticipate numerous applications of peroxalate nanoparticles for in vivo imaging of hydrogen peroxide, given their high specificity and sensitivity and deep-tissue-imaging capability.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissues (funded by NSF-EEC-9731643) (N.M.), NSF-BES-0546962 Career Award (N.M.), NIH UO1 HL80711-01 (N.M.), NIH R21 EB006418 (N.M.), J&J/GT Health Care Innovation Seed Grant Proposal (N.M.) and NIH P01 HL58000 (W.R.T.). The authors would like to thank R. Dasari (Department of Chemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology) for nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared analysis.
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Lee, D., Khaja, S., Velasquez-Castano, J. et al. In vivo imaging of hydrogen peroxide with chemiluminescent nanoparticles. Nature Mater 6, 765–769 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1983
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1983
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