Journal
CHEMICAL SCIENCE
Volume 3, Issue 7, Pages 2246-2251Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c2sc20206a
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Funding
- Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, of the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
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With recent advances in stem cell therapies and oncological research, prolonged tracking of single cells in vivo is critical to understanding their unusual biology. To tag these cells, nanocrystal-based probes are highly desirable since their composition can be tailored for specific imaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging or whole-body fluorescence imaging. Nevertheless, a robust strategy to incorporate nanocrystals to the cytosol of living cells for tracking schemes has been difficult to achieve. We report here a biomimetic approach to nanocrystal delivery, ideally suited for cell tracking schemes, using a unique class of core-shell colloidal polymer vectors decorated with both amine and guanidine functionalities. These materials exhibit unusual dual responsive character to both pH and temperature that can be leveraged to translocate nanocrystal/polymer assemblies to the cytosol in less than an hour. By avoiding prolonged exposure to the acidic microenvironment of late endosomes, the intact nanocrystals no longer pose a problem to cell health. Such a rapid trajectory for these mixed-component assemblies into live cells is unprecedented and should make practical a wider array of nanoparticle-based tracking schemes in biological systems than is currently possible.
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