Browsing by Author "Tsai, Wei-Kai"

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Molecular design of near-infrared fluorescent Pdots for tumor targeting: aggregation-induced emission versus anti-aggregation-caused quenching
(2019-01-07)
Tsai, Wei-Kai
;
Wang, Chun-I.
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Liao, Chia-Hsien
;
Yao, Chun-Nien
;
Kuo, Tsai-Jhen
Semiconducting polymer dots (Pdots) have recently emerged as a new type of ultrabright fluorescent probe that has been proved to be very useful for biomedical imaging. However, Pdots often suffer from serious fluorescence aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) especially for near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent Pdots. This article compared two strategies to overcome the ACQ effect in near-infrared emissive Pdot systems: aggregation-induced emission (AIE) and anti-aggregation-caused quenching (anti-ACQ). The results show that the anti-ACQ platform outperforms the AIE system. The fluorescence quantum yield of anti-ACQ-based Pdots can be over 50% and the average per-particle brightness of the Pdots is about 5 times higher than that of the commercially available quantum dots. To help understand why the monomer conformations could greatly affect the optical properties of Pdots, molecular dynamics simulations were performed for the first time in such complicated Pdot systems. To demonstrate applications for in vivo fluorescence imaging, both microangiography imaging on living zebrafish embryos and specific tumor targeting on mice were performed. We anticipate that these studies will pave the way for the design of new highly fluorescent Pdot systems.
Semiconducting polymer dots as near-infrared fluorescent probes for bioimaging and sensing
(2019-01-01)
Tsai, Wei-Kai
;
Chan, Yang-Hsiang
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應用化學系
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Department of Applied Chemistry
In recent years, semiconducting polymer dots (Pdots) have emerged as a new type of ultrabright fluorescent probes, which have been proved to be very useful for biomedical imaging. Pdots possess several exceptional advantages including high fluorescence brightness, fast radiative rate, excellent photostability, and negligible cytotoxicity. Among these new types of Pdots, the near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent Pdots appear to be the most urgent and important owing to their promising deep-tissue imaging in the clinic. This mini-review highlights the recent progress in the design of NIR-emitting Pdots and their biomedical applications both in vitro and in vivo.