Preparation and characterization of a novel silicon-modified nanobubble

Jia Liu; Bo Zhang; Maotong Li; Meijun Zhou; Fei Li; Xiuxian Huang; Min Pan; Li Xue; Fei Yan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0178031

Preparation and characterization of a novel silicon-modified nanobubble

PLoS One. 2017 May 30;12(5):e0178031. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0178031. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Jia Liu¹, Bo Zhang², Maotong Li³, Meijun Zhou⁴, Fei Li⁵, Xiuxian Huang⁵, Min Pan⁶, Li Xue¹, Fei Yan⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Echocardiography, Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
² Department of Echocardiography, Shanghai Eastern Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
³ CT Room, The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
⁴ Department of Ultrasonography, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
⁵ Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging, Institute of biomedical and Health Engineering, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
⁶ Department of Echocardiography, Shenzhen Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

Nanobubbles (NBs) opened a new field of ultrasound imaging. There is still no practical method to control the diameter of bubbles. In this study, we developed a new method to control the size by incorporating of silicon hybrid lipids into the bubble membrane. The range of particle size of resulting NBs is between 523.02 ± 46.45 to 857.18 ± 82.90, smaller than the conventional microbubbles. The size of resulting NBs increased with the decrease in amount of silicon hybrid lipids, indicating the diameter of NBs can be regulated through modulating the ratio of silicon hybrid lipids in the bubble shell. Typical harmonic signals could be detected. The in vitro and in vivo ultrasound imaging experiments demonstrated these silicon-modified NBs had significantly improved ultrasound contrast enhancement abilities. Cytotoxicity assays revealed that these NBs had no obvious cytotoxicity to the 293 cell line at the tested bubble concentration. Our results showed that the novel NBs could use as nanoscale ultrasound contrast agents, providing the foundation for NBs in future applications including contrast-enhanced imaging and drug/gene delivery.

MeSH terms

Microbubbles*
Nanostructures / chemistry*
Silicon / chemistry*

Substances

Silicon

Grants and funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this research from National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant Nos. 2014CB744502, 2013CB733804 to FY), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81571690 to LX, 81371563 and 81571701 to FY, 81571693 to BZ), Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee grants: (JCYJ20150521144321010 to FY and JCYJ20150331091304763 to MP). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.