The nanoprobes for identification of cancer metastases in the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) organs are of significant importance but are limited due to the long-standing challenge of low tumor-targeting specificity with inadequate targeting efficiency and high nonspecific accumulation. Here, we report a surface regulation strategy that integrates the tumor-acidity-activated charge-reversal behavior and precise control in both hydrodynamic diameter (HD) and surface charge on ultrasmall luminescent gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to achieve significantly high tumor-targeting specificity. The precise regulation of AuNPs to a rational HD and surface charge could rapidly and selectively recognize small metastatic tumors (∼1 mm) in liver and lung with high signal-to-noise ratios of 4.6 and 4.5, respectively. These results help further understand the in vivo transport of nanoprobes and provide guidance for design of translatable nanosized nanomedicines in cancer metastasis theranostics.
Keywords: cancer metastasis; gold nanoparticle; imaging; luminescence; surface regulation.