AUTHOR=Genovese Damiano , Petrizza Luca , Prodi Luca , Rampazzo Enrico , De Sanctis Francesco , Spinelli Antonello Enrico , Boschi Federico , Zaccheroni Nelsi TITLE=Tandem Dye-Doped Nanoparticles for NIR Imaging via Cerenkov Resonance Energy Transfer JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=8 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2020.00071 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2020.00071 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

The detection of the Cerenkov radiation (CR) is an emerging preclinical imaging technique which allows monitoring the in vivo distribution of radionuclides. Among its possible advantages, the most interesting is the simplicity and cost of the required instrumentation compared, e.g., to that required for PET scans. On the other hand, one of its main drawbacks is related to the fact that CR, presenting the most intense component in the UV-vis region, has a very low penetration in biological tissues. To address this issue, we present here multifluorophoric silica nanoparticles properly designed to efficiently absorb the CR radiation and to have a quite high fluorescence quantum yield (0.12) at 826 nm. Thanks to a highly efficient series of energy transfer processes, each nanoparticle can convert part of the CR into NIR light, increasing its detection even under 1.0-cm thickness of muscle.