Coupling BODIPY with nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots to address the water solubility of photosensitizers
Fecha
2022-05-12
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
Royal Society of Chemistry
Resumen
The potential of photodynamic therapy (PDT) applications is based primarily on the selection of suitable
photosensitizers (PSs). However, highly efficient PSs producing singlet oxygen and other reactive oxygen
species (ROS) often have poor water solubility and tend to aggregate in biological media. The most
common alternative strategy to address the solubility of PSs is based on difficult-to-control
encapsulation or conjugation to liposomes, micelles, or other nanoparticles via surface non-covalent
interactions. Covalent functionalization remains relatively unexplored for common PSs. Here, we report
a strategy to use highly efficient but poorly water-soluble BODIPY PSs connected to the surface of
nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (NGQDs) through controlled covalent functionalization. These
NGQD–BODIPY PSs do not aggregate in aqueous solutions and generate ROS upon irradiation with visible
light, with singlet-oxygen production quantum yields up to 83%. In vitro fluorescence bioimaging
was used to confirm that the PSs reside mostly in the cytoplasmic region of human cervical cancer cells
(HeLa), and the system reduced the cell viability by B85% upon irradiation.
Descripción
This work was supported by the Operational Program Research,
Development, and Education-Project ‘MSCAfellow4@MUNI’
(No. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/20_079/0017045). We acknowledge
CzechNanoLab Research Infrastructure (LM2018110), supported
by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the
Czech Republic (MEYS CR). We also acknowledge the support by
the Strategy of the Czech Academy of Sciences program Qualitas
(68081707). P. K. thanks the RECETOX Research Infrastructure
(No. LM2018121) financed by the Ministry of Education, Youth
and Sports, and the Operational Programme Research, Development
and Education (the CETOCOEN EXCELLENCE project
No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/17_043/0009632) for supportive background.
This project was also supported by the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
under grant agreement No. 857560. This publication reflects
only the authors’ view, and the European Commission is not
responsible for any use that may be made of the information it
contains. We are grateful to Prof. Vladimı´r Sˇindela´rˇ for allowing
us to use the MW reactor, supported by the RECETOX research
infrastructure (via MEYS CR under LM2018121).
Palabras clave
Citación
Mater. Chem. Front., 2022,6, 1719-1726