Highly stable and biocompatible nanocontrast agent encapsulating a novel organic fluorescent dye for enhanced cellular imaging

Conventional organic dyes and inorganic fluorescent contrast agents have been hampered in bioimaging and biomedical purposes due to their intrinsic drawbacks. Thus there is a pressing need to develop novel classes of fluorescent contrasts with merits of high photostability and good biocompatibility for biomedical applications. In this study, we report the fabrication of a nanosized contrast agent (T_nano) loaded with a novel organic fluorescent dye (TPACN) and evaluation of its performance for cellular imaging. This nanocontrast agent not only preserved the optical characters of TPACN, including superior fluorescence quantum yield (QY) of 67% and large Stokes shift of 165 nm, but also exhibited remarkable colloidal and fluorescence stabilities compared to free TPACN, and superior biocompatibility and enhanced cellular imaging capacity as well. Given these favorable properties, our TPACN-loaded nanocontrast agent might potentially be applied for bioimaging and biomedical use in the future.