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Fabrication of Carbon Dots with Singlet Oxygen Generation and Their Potential Photodynamic Therapy Applications

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Abstract

Due to the unique chemical and biomedical properties of carbon dots (CDs), they have increasingly obtained the attention in many research fields, for example, bioimaging, fluorescence sensing, and drug delivery, etc. Recently, it was found that, under light excitation, CDs can also be exploited as a novel photosensitizer to prepare reactive oxygen species (ROS), which expand their applications in the field of photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment. Nevertheless, the high cost and complex fabrication approach of CDs significantly limit their applications. To address this issue, bottom-up routes usually utilize sustainable and inexpensive carbon precursor as starting materials, employed N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) or ethanol as an environmental-friendly solvent. Bottom-up approach was energy efficient, and the purification process was relatively simple by dialysis. Therefore, carbon dots (CDs) were facilely fabricated in a one-pot solvothermal process using 1-aminoanthraquinone as a precursor, and their application as photosensitizers for in vitro antitumor cells, especially photodynamic therapy (PDT) was established. Then the photophysical and nanoscale dimensions properties of the fabricated CDs were characterized via TEM, UV–visible, fluorescence, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The synthesized N-doped CDs can easily dissolve in water, possess very low biotoxicity, yellow-light emission (maximum peak at 587 nm). More importantly, PDT studies demonstrated that the obtained CDs possess a high singlet oxygen yield of 35%, and exhibit significant phototoxicity to cancer cells upon 635 nm laser irradiation. These studies highlight that N-doped CDs can be facilely synthesized from only one precursor, and are a potentially novel theranostic agent for in vivo PDT.

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No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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Funding

This work was supported by 2023 Weifang Medical University Affiliated Hospital Science and Technology Development Project (2023FYZ018), the Key Research & Development Program of Linyi, Shandong Province (2022YX0093) and Qilu Special Project (YXH2022ZX02069).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Laboratory, Linyi Central Hospital, Yishui County, 17 Jiankang Road, Linyi, 276400, Shandong, China

    Pengli Zuo, Lan Cheng, Jinyu Zhang & Xiuhua Lu

  2. R&D Centre for Multimodal Nanocontrast Agents of Jining Medical University, Jining, 272067, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Jun Peng

  3. Wuxi Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wuxi, 214023, Jiangsu, China

    Yuyang Yao

  4. School of Pharmacy, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, 261053, Shandong, China

    Wei Tan

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  1. Pengli Zuo
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Contributions

Pengli Zuo was responsible for conceptualization, synthesis, data curation, writing-original draft. Jun Peng was responsible for resources, conceptualization. Yuyang Yao: software, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation. Wei Tan was responsible for synthesis, funding acquisition, project administration. Lan Cheng: investigation and methodology. Jinyu Zhang: resources and formal analysis. Xiuhua Lu: formal analysis, supervision, writing-review & editing. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pengli Zuo.

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Zuo, P., Peng, J., Yao, Y. et al. Fabrication of Carbon Dots with Singlet Oxygen Generation and Their Potential Photodynamic Therapy Applications. J Fluoresc (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-024-03725-6

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