I-Corps: High Brightness Fluorescence Reagents for Biomedical Applications

荧光分子是生物医学研究的重要成像试剂之一，如DNA测序、细胞追踪、受体标记、药物递送和体内成像，市场规模约为4.92亿美元。 荧光技术具有成本效益，并且还提供实时响应和亚细胞分辨率。不幸的是，荧光强度的闪烁、猝灭或退化限制了这些成像技术的灵敏度和分辨率。在这个项目中，该团队建议使用氮化硼纳米管（BNNT）来解决这些荧光问题。BNNT可以提供由碳纳米管（CNT）提供的所有药物递送优点，而不具有非辐射衰变通道。由于BNNT的生物相容性和电绝缘性，BNNT是最佳的荧光纳米载体，可以避免荧光分子的猝灭。这在理论上是合理的，因为荧光团的LUMO能级（最低未占分子轨道）中的光激发电子在能量上远离BNNT的价态能级，并且不会转移到BNNT。此外，BNNT提供了用各种聚合物分子共价和非共价官能化的灵活性。

Fluorescent molecules are among the important imaging reagents for biomedical research such as DNA sequencing, cell tracing, receptor labeling, drug delivery and in vivo imaging with a market size of approximately $492 million dollars. The fluorescence technology is cost effective and it also provides real-time response, and subcellular resolution. Unfortunately, blinking, quenching or degradation of fluorescence intensity has limited the sensitivity and resolution of these imaging techniques. In this project, the team proposes to use the boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) to resolve these fluorescence issues. BNNTs can offer all the drug delivery advantages provided by carbon nanotubes (CNTs) without having non-radiative decay channels. Because of the biological compatibility and electrical insulating nature, BNNTs are the optimum fluorescent nanocarriers that can avoid quenching of fluorescence molecules. This is theoretically sounded, as the light excited electrons in the LUMO level (lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) of the fluorophores are energetically far away from the valence level of BNNTs, and will not be transferred to BNNTs. In addition, BNNTs offer flexibility to be functionalized with various polymeric molecules covalently and non-covalently.