Single-Atom Gadolinium Anchored on Graphene Quantum Dots as a Magnetic Resonance Signal Amplifier
Haizhen Ding, Dong Wang, Anwar Sadat, Zhenzhen Li, Xiaolong Hu, Mingsheng Xu, P.C. Morais, Binghui Ge, Song Sun, Jiechao Ge, Yan Chen, Yinfeng Qian, Chengliang Shen, Xianyang Shi, Xin Huang, Ren-Quan Zhang, Hong Bi
Abstract
A single-atom metal doped on carbonaceous nanomaterials has attracted increasing attention due to its potential applications as high-performance catalysts. However, few studies focus on the applications of such nanomaterials as nanotheranostics for simultaneous bioimaging and cancer therapy. Herein, it is pioneeringly demonstrated that the single-atom Gd anchored onto graphene quantum dots (SAGd-GQDs), with dendrite-like morphology, was successfully prepared. More importantly, the as-fabricated SAGd-GQDs exhibits a robustly enhanced longitudinal relaxivity (r1 = 86.08 mM–1 s–1) at a low Gd3+ concentration of 2 μmol kg–1, which is 25 times higher than the commercial Gd-DTPA (r1 = 3.44 mM–1 s–1). In vitro and in vivo studies suggest that the obtained SAGd-GQDs is a highly potent and contrast agent to obtain high-definition MRI, thereby opening up more opportunities for future precise clinical theranostics.