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Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells

Aiming to understand and enhance the capacity of carbon dots (CDs) to transport through cell membranes and target subcellular organelles—in particular, mitochondria—a series of nitrogen-doped CDs were prepared by the one-step microwave-assisted pyrolysis of citric acid and ethylenediamine. Following...

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Autores principales: Kaminari, Archontia, Nikoli, Eleni, Athanasopoulos, Alexandros, Sakellis, Elias, Sideratou, Zili, Tsiourvas, Dimitris
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470554/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34577632
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph14090932
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author Kaminari, Archontia
Nikoli, Eleni
Athanasopoulos, Alexandros
Sakellis, Elias
Sideratou, Zili
Tsiourvas, Dimitris
author_facet Kaminari, Archontia
Nikoli, Eleni
Athanasopoulos, Alexandros
Sakellis, Elias
Sideratou, Zili
Tsiourvas, Dimitris
author_sort Kaminari, Archontia
collection PubMed
description Aiming to understand and enhance the capacity of carbon dots (CDs) to transport through cell membranes and target subcellular organelles—in particular, mitochondria—a series of nitrogen-doped CDs were prepared by the one-step microwave-assisted pyrolysis of citric acid and ethylenediamine. Following optimization of the reaction conditions for maximum fluorescence, functionalization at various degrees with alkylated triphenylphosphonium functional groups of two different alkyl chain lengths afforded a series of functionalized CDs that exhibited either lysosome or mitochondria subcellular localization. Further functionalization with rhodamine B enabled enhanced fluorescence imaging capabilities in the visible spectrum and allowed the use of low quantities of CDs in relevant experiments. It was thus possible, by the appropriate selection of the alkyl chain length and degree of functionalization, to attain successful mitochondrial targeting, while preserving non-toxicity and biocompatibility. In vitro cell experiments performed on normal as well as cancer cell lines proved their non-cytotoxic character and imaging potential, even at very low concentrations, by fluorescence microscopy. Precise targeting of mitochondria is feasible with carefully designed CDs that, furthermore, are specifically internalized in cells and cell mitochondria of high transmembrane potential and thus exhibit selective uptake in malignant cells compared to normal cells.
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spelling pubmed-84705542021-09-27 Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells Kaminari, Archontia Nikoli, Eleni Athanasopoulos, Alexandros Sakellis, Elias Sideratou, Zili Tsiourvas, Dimitris Pharmaceuticals (Basel) Article Aiming to understand and enhance the capacity of carbon dots (CDs) to transport through cell membranes and target subcellular organelles—in particular, mitochondria—a series of nitrogen-doped CDs were prepared by the one-step microwave-assisted pyrolysis of citric acid and ethylenediamine. Following optimization of the reaction conditions for maximum fluorescence, functionalization at various degrees with alkylated triphenylphosphonium functional groups of two different alkyl chain lengths afforded a series of functionalized CDs that exhibited either lysosome or mitochondria subcellular localization. Further functionalization with rhodamine B enabled enhanced fluorescence imaging capabilities in the visible spectrum and allowed the use of low quantities of CDs in relevant experiments. It was thus possible, by the appropriate selection of the alkyl chain length and degree of functionalization, to attain successful mitochondrial targeting, while preserving non-toxicity and biocompatibility. In vitro cell experiments performed on normal as well as cancer cell lines proved their non-cytotoxic character and imaging potential, even at very low concentrations, by fluorescence microscopy. Precise targeting of mitochondria is feasible with carefully designed CDs that, furthermore, are specifically internalized in cells and cell mitochondria of high transmembrane potential and thus exhibit selective uptake in malignant cells compared to normal cells. MDPI 2021-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8470554/ /pubmed/34577632 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph14090932 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Kaminari, Archontia
Nikoli, Eleni
Athanasopoulos, Alexandros
Sakellis, Elias
Sideratou, Zili
Tsiourvas, Dimitris
Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title_full Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title_fullStr Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title_full_unstemmed Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title_short Engineering Mitochondriotropic Carbon Dots for Targeting Cancer Cells
title_sort engineering mitochondriotropic carbon dots for targeting cancer cells
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470554/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34577632
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph14090932
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