Journal of Nanomedicine & Biotherapeutic Discovery
Open Access

Abstract

Carbon Dots in Nanomedicine Roger M Leblanc, University of Miami, USA

Roger M Leblanc

Carbon Dots (CDs) with size but 10 nm have recently triggered great attention within the research of materials science and engineering thanks to their unique properties. They need been widely explored for applications for printing, bio imaging, drug delivery, thermoelectric materials, photo catalysis and biomedical  engineering. These CDs were prepared from both topdown and bottom-up strategies and rigorously characterized by spectroscopy (UV-vis, fluorescence, FTIR and XPS), microscopy (AFM and TEM) and other (e.g., spectrum analysis, zeta potential, etc.) commonly used techniques. A significant medical challenge one faces to treat  Central system nervous (CNS) related diseases is to cross the barrier. Recently, the in vivo experimental observations suggested that many CDs could enter the CNS of zebrafish and rats with different mechanisms. Due to the abundant presence of carboxylic acids on the surface, CDs are easily conjugated with transferrin and anticancer drugs Doxorubicin. The system was proved to be an efficient drug delivery system for the delivery of doxorubicin into cancerous cells. The study has shown that CDs with low quantum yield dark bind to calcified bone structures of live zebrafish larvae with high affinity and selectively. Binding resulted in an exceedingly strong enhancement of photoluminescence that wasn't observed in other tissues, including non-calcified endochondral elements. Retention of CDs by bones was very stable, long lasting and with no detectable toxicity. Further, it's shown that this high affinity and specificity binding property towards bone is exclusive to the CDs developed within the lab, selective CDs in literature didn't show any interaction with the bone. These observations support a unique and revolutionary use of CDs as highly specific drug delivery carrier. 

Published Date: 2021-01-31;