Microemulsion-Confined Assembly of Magnetic Nanoclusters for pH/H2O2 Dual-Responsive T2-T1 Switchable MRI

Wei Liu; Sheng-Yan Yin; Yingcai Hu; Ting Deng; Jishan Li

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c22747

Microemulsion-Confined Assembly of Magnetic Nanoclusters for pH/H₂O₂ Dual-Responsive T₂-T₁ Switchable MRI

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Jan 19;14(2):2629-2637. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c22747. Epub 2022 Jan 10.

Authors

Wei Liu¹, Sheng-Yan Yin¹, Yingcai Hu¹, Ting Deng², Jishan Li¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Bio-Sensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
² Institute of Applied Chemistry, School of Science, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha 410004, P. R. China.

PMID: 35000378
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c22747

Abstract

In this work, a T₂-T₁ switchable superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoprobe with a pH/H₂O₂ dual response was obtained using a microemulsion method. This novel method for the controllable assembly of small iron clusters followed by their independent modification was reported, which could not be prepared by common synthetic methods. The size of the assembled nanoprobe was uniform and controllable, with a stable T₂ magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signal under a single condition. When the nanoprobe was exposed to the tumor environment, the higher H⁺ and H₂O₂ concentrations at the tumor site could dissociate the nanoprobe and redisperse into small iron clusters. When this occurred, the T₂ MRI signal was converted into a T₁ MRI signal, achieving specific detection of tumors by a pH/H₂O₂ dual-response T₂-T₁ MRI.

Keywords: T2−T1 switchable; controllable aggregation; independent modification; magnetic resonance imaging; microemulsion; ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles).