Biosynthesis of NIR-II Ag2 Se Quantum Dots with Bacterial Catalase for Photoacoustic Imaging and Alleviating-Hypoxia Photothermal Therapy

Shi-Hui Chen; Hengke Liu; Biao Huang; Jie Zheng; Zhi-Ling Zhang; Dai-Wen Pang; Peng Huang; Ran Cui

doi:10.1002/smll.202310795

Biosynthesis of NIR-II Ag₂ Se Quantum Dots with Bacterial Catalase for Photoacoustic Imaging and Alleviating-Hypoxia Photothermal Therapy

Small. 2024 Mar 19:e2310795. doi: 10.1002/smll.202310795. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Shi-Hui Chen¹, Hengke Liu², Biao Huang¹, Jie Zheng¹, Zhi-Ling Zhang¹, Dai-Wen Pang³, Peng Huang², Ran Cui^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, P. R. China.
² Marshall Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering, International Cancer Center, Laboratory of Evolutionary Theranostics (LET), School of Biomedical Engineering, Shenzhen University Medical School, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Biosensing and Molecular Recognition, Research Center for Analytical Sciences, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, P. R. China.
⁴ Hubei Jiangxia Laboratory, Wuhan, 430200, P. R. China.

PMID: 38501992
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202310795

Abstract

Developing the second near-infrared (NIR-II) photoacoustic (PA) agent is of great interest in bioimaging. Ag₂ Se quantum dots (QDs) are one kind of potential probe for applications in NIR-II photoacoustic imaging (PAI). However, the surfaces with excess anions of Ag₂ Se QDs, which increase the probability of nonradiative transitions of excitons benefiting PA imaging, are not conducive to binding electron donor ligands for potential biolabeling and imaging. In this study, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) cells are driven for the biosynthesis of Ag₂ Se QDs with catalase (CAT). Biosynthesized Ag₂ Se (bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT) QDs are produced in Se-enriched environment of S. aureus and have a high Se-rich surface. The photothermal conversion efficiency of bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT QDs at 808 and 1064 nm is calculated as 75.3% and 51.7%, respectively. Additionally, the PA signal responsiveness of bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT QDs is ≈10 times that of the commercial PA contrast agent indocyanine green. In particular, the bacterial CAT is naturally attached to bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT QDs surface, which can effectively relieve tumor hypoxia. The bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT QDs can relieve heat-initiated oxidative stress while undergoing effective photothermal therapy (PTT). Such biosynthesis method of NIR-II bio-Ag₂ Se-CAT QDs opens a new avenue for developing multifunctional nanomaterials, showing great promise for PAI, hypoxia alleviation, and PTT.

Keywords: NIR-II quantum dots; biosynthesis; hypoxia alleviation; photoacoustic imaging; photothermal therapy.

Abstract

Grants and funding