Cancer Cell Targeting Via Selective Transferrin Receptor Labeling Using Protein-Derived Carbon Dots.

ABSTRACT: Carbon dot (CD) nanoparticles offer tremendous advantages as fluorescent probes in bioimaging and biosensing; however, they lack specific affinity for biomolecules, limiting their practical applications in selective targeting. Nanoparticles with intrinsic affinity for a target have applications in imaging, cytometry, therapeutics, etc. Toward that end, we report the transferrin receptor (CD71) targeting CDs, synthesized for the first time. The formation of these particles is truly groundbreaking, as direct tuning of nanoparticle affinity was achieved by simple and careful precursor selection of a protein, which has the targeting characteristic of interest. We hypothesized that the retention of the original protein's peptides on the nanoparticle surface provides the CDs with some of the fun

SUBMITTER: Strickland S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10795060 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature