Ultrasmall gadolinium hydrated carbonate nanoparticle: an advanced T₁ MRI contrast agent with large longitudinal...

Inorganic nanoparticle-based T₁ contrast agents with high longitudinal relaxivity (r₁) and low r₂/r₁ ratio have attracted great interest in recent years. However, the r₁ relaxivity of inorganic nanoparticles reported to date is relatively low. In this work, 2.3 ± 0.1 nm paramagnetic gadolinium hydrated carbonate nanoparticles (GHC-1) with a high r₁ relaxivity of 34.8 mM^-1 s^-1 and low r₂/r₁ ratio of 1.17 are synthesized using a one-pot hydrothermal process. The r₁ of GHC-1 is 9.4 times higher than that of Gd-DTPA at 0.55 T. The synthetic procedure is simple, cost effective, and easy to scale up. The nanoparticles have a small core size, an amorphous phase, and are well-coated by poly(acrylic acid). Due to the hydrophilic polymer coating, the particles are highly dispersible and stable in aqueous solution. No significant cellular or in vivo toxicity are observed for the nanoparticles, which guarantees the in vivo application of this material. Finally, we apply the nanoparticles to in vivo magnetic resonance imaging and study the biodistribution in organs. This study reveals GHC-1 as a potential candidate for a T₁ contrast agent with extraordinary ability to enhance MR images.