Author/Authors :
Moghaddam, Sakineh E Department of Chemistry - The Smalley-Curl Institute - Rice University - Houston, USA , Hernandez-Rivera, Mayra Department of Chemistry - The Smalley-Curl Institute - Rice University - Houston, USA , Zaibaq, Nicholas G Department of Chemistry - The Smalley-Curl Institute - Rice University - Houston, USA , Ajala, Afis Department of Radiology - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center - Bertner Avenue - Houston, USA , Cabreira-Hansen, Maria da Graça Texas Heart Institute - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center - Houston, USA , Mowlazadeh-Haghighi, Saghar Department of Chemistry - The Smalley-Curl Institute - Rice University - Houston, USA , Willerson, James T Texas Heart Institute - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center - Houston, USA , Perin, Emerson C Texas Heart Institute - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center - Houston, USA , Muthupillai, Raja Department of Radiology - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center - Bertner Avenue - Houston, USA , Wilson, Lon J Department of Chemistry - The Smalley-Curl Institute - Rice University - Houston, USA
Abstract :
A gentle, rapid method has been developed to introduce a polyacrylic acid (PAA) polymer coating on the surface of gadonanotubes (GNTs) which significantly increases their dispersibility in water without the need of a surfactant. As a result, the
polymer, with its many carboxylic acid groups, coats the surface of the GNTs to form a new GNT-polymer hybrid material (PAAGNT) which can be highly dispersed in water (ca. 20 mg·mL−1
) at physiological pH. When dispersed in water, the new PAA-GNT
material is a powerful MRI contrast agent with an extremely short water proton spin-lattice relaxation time (T1) which results in
a T1-weighted relaxivity of 150 mM−1
·s
−1 per Gd3+ ion at 1.5 T. Furthermore, the PAA-GNTs have been used to safely label porcine
bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells for magnetic resonance imaging. e labeled cells display excellent image contrast
in phantom imaging experiments, and transmission electron microscopy images of the labeled cells reveal the presence of highly
dispersed PAA-GNTs within the cytoplasm with 1014 Gd3+ ions per cell.
Keywords :
MRI , Cell , Hybrid , GNT
