A bright organic NIR-II nanofluorophore for three-dimensional imaging into biological tissues

作者:Wan, Hao; Yue, Jingying; Zhu, Shoujun; Uno, Takaaki; Zhang, Xiaodong; Yang, Qinglai; Yu, Kuai; Hong, Guosong; Wang, Junying; Li, Lulin; Ma, Zhuoran; Gao, Hongpeng; Zhong, Yeteng; Su, Jessica; Antaris, Alexander L.; Xia, Yan; Luo, Jian; Liang, Yongye*; Dai, Hongjie*
来源:Nature Communications, 2018, 9(1): 1171.
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-03505-4

摘要

Fluorescence imaging of biological systems in the second near-infrared (NIR-II, 1000-1700 nm) window has shown promise of high spatial resolution, low background, and deep tissue penetration owing to low autofluorescence and suppressed scattering of long wavelength photons. Here we develop a bright organic nanofluorophore (named p-FE) for high-performance biological imaging in the NIR-II The bright NIR-II > 1100 nm fluorescence emission from p-FE affords non-invasive in vivo tracking of blood flow in mouse brain vessels. Excitingly, p-FE enables one-photon based, three-dimensional (3D) confocal imaging of vasculatures in fixed mouse brain tissue with a layer-by-layer imaging depth up to similar to 1.3mm and sub-10 mu m high spatial resolution. We also perform in vivo two-color fluorescence imaging in the NIR-II window by utilizing p-FE as a vasculature imaging agent emitting between 1100 and 1300 nm and single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) emitting above 1500 nm to highlight tumors in mice.