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Traditional Chinese medicine molecule-assisted chemical synthesis of fluorescent anti-cancer silicon nanoparticles

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Abstract

Fluorescent silicon (Si) nanoparticles (SiNPs) hold great promise for innumerable biological and biomedical applications owing to their unique optical properties and negligible toxicity. In this article, we present a new traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) molecule-assisted chemical synthetic strategy, suitable for the production of multifunctional small-sized (diameter: ~ 3.7 nm) SiNPs in a facile and rapid (~ 10 min) manner. Of particular significance, the resultant SiNPs simultaneously exhibited robust and stable fluorescence (photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY): ~ 15%), as well as intrinsic anti-cancer efficacy with excellent selectivity toward cancer cells. Taking advantage of these unique merits, we further employed these novel fluorescent anti-cancer SiNPs (AC-SiNPs) for the fluorescence tracking and treatment of tumors, demonstrating long-term (~ 18 days) inhibition of tumor growth in tumor-bearing mice. Consequently, we believe this new TCM-assisted chemical synthetic method is highly attractive for designing silicon nanostructures featuring multiple functionalities, and we suggest these AC-SiNPs as novel promising tools for providing visual evidence of TCM-based cancer treatment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Shuit-Tong Lee (Soochow University, China) for general help and valuable suggestions. We appreciate financial support from the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB934400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61361160412, 31400860, 21575096, and 21605109), and a project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), 111 Project as well as Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology (NANO-CIC).

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  1. Xiaoyuan Ji and Daoxia Guo contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Nanoscale Biochemical Analysis, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Xiaoyuan Ji, Daoxia Guo, Bin Song, Sicong Wu, Binbin Chu, Yuanyuan Su & Yao He

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  1. Xiaoyuan Ji
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  2. Daoxia Guo
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Correspondence to Yao He.

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Ji, X., Guo, D., Song, B. et al. Traditional Chinese medicine molecule-assisted chemical synthesis of fluorescent anti-cancer silicon nanoparticles. Nano Res. 11, 5629–5641 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-1976-1

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