Effective cellular internalization of silica-coated CdSe quantum dots for high contrast cancer imaging and labelling applications

The possibility of developing novel contrast imaging agents for cancer cellular labelling and fluorescence imaging applications were explored using silica-coated cadmium selenide (CdSe) quantum dots (QDs). The time dependent cellular internalization efficiency study was carried out using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (cLSM) after exposing QDs to stem cells and cancer cells. The strong fluorescence from the cytoplasm confirmed that the QDs were efficiently internalized by the cells. The internalization maxima were observed at the fourth hour of incubation in both stem and cancer cells. Further, the in vitro fluorescence imaging as well as localization study of QDs were performed in various cells. Moreover, high contrast in vivo tumor imaging efficiency of silica-coated CdSe QDs was performed in ultrathin sections of tumor mice, and the results confirmed its effective role in cellular imaging and labelling in cancer and other diseases.