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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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8470554 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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