Peptide-conjugated Fluorescent Silicon Nanoparticles Enabling Simultaneous Tracking And Specific Destruction Of Cancer Cells In Vitro

Over the past decade, taking advantages of unique optical properties and favorable biocompatibility, fluorescent silicon nanoparticles(SiNPs) have emerged as a novel kind of promising fluorescent naonprobes. In comparison to relatively large-sized proteins, Arg-Gly-Asp(Arginine-Glycine-Aspartic acid, RGD) peptides, known as one typical kind of biofunctional small molecules, are thought to have great potential as targeting ligands of cancer cells due to their smaller size, higher stability, and lower immunogenicity, etc.In our research, we present a kind of fluorescent silicon nanoparticles bioprobes, i.e., peptides-conjugated SiNPs, which simultaneously feature small sizes, biological functionality, stable and strong fluorescence, as well as favourable biocompatibility. Taking advantages of these merits, we further demonstrate such resultant SiNPs bioprobes are superbly suitable for real-time immunofluorescence imaging of cancer cells. Meanwhile, malignant tumor cells could be specifically destroyed by the peptides-conjugated SiNPs, suggesting potential promise of simultaneous detection and destruction of cancer cells.