Functionalized Plasmonic Anisotropic Nanocrystals for Multimodal Imaging of Cancer Cells

Nanoparticles internalized by cells are valuable probes for bioimaging. In particular, nanoparticles can be detected in “biological transmission window,” i.e., near infrared region. Here, we report a preparation of biotargeting diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide (DTTC)-functionalized gold nanorods, utilized for detection of malignant cells. These biotargeting DTTC-functionalized gold nanorods are efficiently internalized into cultured cells and can serve as probes for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and dark-field imaging. The robust SERS signal from malignant cells has clearly demonstrated a signature peak of DTTC in the presence of our formulation. A short acquisition time, we used in this experiment, is able to exclude bulk of Raman signal from natural cellular constituents. This signature peak will be a key of identifying cancer due to cancer-specific property of biotargeted molecule. The results are leading to promising real-time cancer detection. In addition, these multimodal probes demonstrated low toxicity in cell viability studies which enables a broad range of multiplex imaging applications.