| Talk title | Near-infrared Fluorescent Probes for Multiplexed In vivo Bioimaging and Biosensing |
| Speaker | Prof. Fan ZHANG Professor Fudan University |
| Date & Time | 12 February 2019 (Fri) 15:00-16:00 |
| Venue | Room G004, E12 Building (University of Macau) |
| Abstract | Deep tissue imaging in the second near-infrared (NIR-II) window holds great promise for physiological studies and biomedical applications. However, inhomogeneous signal attenuation due to biological matter hampers the application of multiple-wavelengths NIR-II probes to multiplexed imaging. Here we present lanthanide-doped NIR-II nanoparticles with engineered luminescence lifetimes for in vivo quantitative imaging using time-domain multiplexing. To achieve this, we devise a systematic approach based on controlled energy relay that creates a tunable lifetime range spanning 3 orders-of-magnitude upon a single emission band. We consistently resolve selected lifetimes from the NIR-II nanoparticle probes at depths up to 8 mm in biological tissues, where signal-to-noise ratio derived from intensity measurements drops below 1.5. We demonstrate that robust lifetime coding is independent of tissue penetration depth, and we apply in vivo multiplexing to identify tumour subtypes in living mice. Our results correlate well with standard ex vivo immunohistochemistry assays, suggesting that luminescence lifetime imaging could be used as a minimally invasive approach for disease diagnosis. |