Abstract
By binding molecular probes that target tumor cells, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with superior characteristics have shown great potential in tumor molecular imaging studies. The non-invasive, high-resolution, and three-dimensional imaging of the targeted AuNPs within the tumor is desirable for both diagnosis and therapy. In this study, gold nanoflowers (AuNFs) are presented as a novel contrast agent for photoacoustic tomography (PAT). By binding to folic acid, the molecular probe, the tail-vein injected AuNFs concentrated within the tumor site in mice; this was clearly visualized by three-dimensional (3D) PAT imaging. In addition, toxicity assay proved that AuNFs were harmless to living cells and animals. Our results demonstrate that AuNFs have great potential in tumor molecular imaging.
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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1485-7.
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Jiang, Y., Deng, Z., Yang, D. et al. Gold nanoflowers for 3D volumetric molecular imaging of tumors by photoacoustic tomography. Nano Res. 8, 2152–2161 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0688-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0688-4