Preparation of Fluorescent Dye-Doped Biocompatible Nanoparticles for Cell Labeling

In this paper, we report a series of fluorescent biocompatible nanoparticles (NPs), prepared by a facile reprecipitation-encapsulation method, for cellular labeling. The as-prepared NPs exhibit a narrow size distribution of 70-110 nm, and a core-shell structure comprised of a hybrid core doped with different dyes and a poly-L-lysine (PLL) shell. With coumarin 6, nile red, and meso- tetraphenylporphyrin as the imaging agents, the fluorescent NPs gave green, orange, and red emissions respectively. Due to the positively charged PLL shell, the fluorescent NPs exhibit neglected cytotoxicity and efficient cellular uptake. After incubation with living cells, the results obtained by laser confocal microscope from green, orange, and red channels all clearly show that the fluores- cent NPs are inhomogenously localized inside the cytoplasm without penetrating into the nucleus. Since such PLL-modified NPs can encapsulate other hydrophobic dyes, a wide spectrum of nanoimaging agents is thus expected. Furthermore, the surface amino groups on the PLL shell afford an anchoring site for further bioconjugation, and targeted imaging is also very promising.