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Magneto-luminescent nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite (Gd, Ho: HAp @Cu-NC) for prospective T1-T2 magnetic resonance imaging and fluorescence bioimaging

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Abstract

Herein, we report luminomagnetic nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite doped with paramagnetic labels and surface modified with luminescent copper nanoclusters. The dopant concentration is obtained through ICP-MS analysis as 4.99% of Gd3+ and 0.61% of Ho3+. Upon excitation at 310 nm, nanocrystals exhibit luminescence with emission maxima at 402 nm. The paramagnetic nanocrystals show saturation magnetization of 19.063 emu g−1. The nanocrystals have potential in develo** T1 and T2 bimodal MRI contrast agents due to remarkable longitudinal as well as transverse relaxivities, values of which are 12.25 s−1 mM−1 and 24.76 s−1 mM−1 respectively. The MTT assay and morphological examination on HeLa cells revealed non-toxicity of nanocrystals up to 250 µg/mL for 24 h incubation. It is investigated that nanocrystals are readily taken up by L929 mouse lung fibroblast cells. Said nanocrystals are potentially persuasive nanoprobes for bimodal MRI and fluorescence bioimaging.

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The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary information files.

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Acknowledgments

The director of the CSIR-NIIST in Thiruvananthapuram, the head of SAIF at IIT Madras, the director of IISER in Thiruvananthapuram, the director of SAIF-STIC-CUSAT in Kochi, the director of CLIF at the University of Kerala, the head of the chemistry department at the University of Kerala (Kariavattom Campus), and the head of the chemistry department at University College in Thiruvananthapuram are all thanked by the authors for providing advanced characterization techniques and laboratory facilities for the present work.

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  1. Department of Chemistry (Post Graduate and Research), University College, Trivandrum, Kerala, 695 034, India

    J. S. Devi & Sasidharanpillai S. Syamchand

  2. Department of Chemistry, Sree Narayana College, Chempazhanthy, Trivandrum, Kerala, 695 587, India

    Dancy Surendran

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Devi, J.S., Surendran, D. & Syamchand, S.S. Magneto-luminescent nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite (Gd, Ho: HAp @Cu-NC) for prospective T1-T2 magnetic resonance imaging and fluorescence bioimaging. Journal of Materials Research 38, 1963–1972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43578-023-00933-x

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