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Carbon-coated FeCo nanoparticles as sensitive magnetic-particle-imaging tracers with photothermal and magnetothermal properties

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 4, pages 325–334 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The low magnetic saturation of iron oxide nanoparticles, which are developed primarily as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging, limits the sensitivity of their detection using magnetic particle imaging (MPI). Here, we show that FeCo nanoparticles that have a core diameter of 10 nm and bear a graphitic carbon shell decorated with poly(ethylene glycol) provide an MPI signal intensity that is sixfold and fifteenfold higher than the signals from the superparamagnetic iron oxide tracers VivoTrax and Feraheme, respectively, at the same molar concentration of iron. We also show that the nanoparticles have photothermal and magnetothermal properties and can therefore be used for tumour ablation in mice, and that they have high optical absorbance in a broad near-infrared region spectral range (wavelength, 700–1,200 nm), making them suitable as tracers for photoacoustic imaging. As sensitive multifunctional and multimodal imaging tracers, carbon-coated FeCo nanoparticles may confer advantages in cancer imaging and hyperthermia therapy.

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Fig. 1: Characterization of 10 nm FeCo@C-PEG purified using density gradient separation (fraction 3).
Fig. 2: In vitro MPI and magnetic hyperthermia by FeCo@C-PEG (fraction 3).
Fig. 3: In vivo MPI of FeCo@C-PEG (fraction 3) in mice.
Fig. 4: MRI and PAI with FeCo@C-PEG.
Fig. 5: In vivo magneto- and photothermal therapy with FeCo@C-PEG.

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Data availability

The main data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information. All data generated, both raw images and analysed datasets, for the figures in this study are available from Figshare with the identifier https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.10732283.v2.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the use of Stanford Centre for Innovation in In-Vivo Imaging (SCI3) Core Facility. This work was supported by the Stanford University National Cancer Institute (CCNE-T grant no. U54CA199075).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Guosheng Song & Zhuo Chen

  2. Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Stanford, CA, USA

    Guosheng Song, Yun-Sheng Chen, Xianchuang Zheng, Sanjiv Sam Gambhir & Jianghong Rao

  3. Department of Chemistry and Bio-X, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Michael Kenney & Hongjie Dai

  4. Departments of Electrical Engineering and Materials Sciences and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Yong Deng & Shan X. Wang

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Contributions

G.S. and J.R. designed the experiments. G.S. performed the experiments. M.K., Z.C. and H.D. contributed to the synthesis of nanoalloy. Y.D. and S.X.W. performed the measurement of magnetic saturation of nanoalloy and analysed the data. Y.-S.C. and S.S.G. contributed to the NIR-II PAI and analysed the results. G.S., X.Z. and J.R. analysed the data and wrote the paper. J.R. supervised the study.

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Correspondence to Guosheng Song or Jianghong Rao.

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Song, G., Kenney, M., Chen, YS. et al. Carbon-coated FeCo nanoparticles as sensitive magnetic-particle-imaging tracers with photothermal and magnetothermal properties. Nat Biomed Eng 4, 325–334 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-019-0506-0

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