Abstract
Nanomaterials have potential medical applications, for example in the area of drug delivery, and their possible adverse effects and cytotoxicity are curently receiving attention. Inhalation of nanoparticles is of great concern, because nanoparticles can be easily aerosolized. Imaging techniques that can visualize local populations of nanoparticles at nanometre resolution within the structures of cells are therefore important. Here we show that cells obtained from mice exposed to single-walled carbon nanohorns can be probed using a scanning probe microscopy technique called scanning near field ultrasonic holography. The nanohorns were observed inside the cells, and this was further confirmed using micro Raman spectroscopy. Scanning near field ultrasonic holography is a useful technique for probing the interactions of engineered nanomaterials in biological systems, which will greatly benefit areas in drug delivery and nanotoxicology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 501-505 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Nature Nanotechnology |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2008 |
Funding
This research was sponsored in part by the ORNL BioEnergy Science Center. The BioEnergy Science Center is a U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science. We are indebted to W. Wang and B. Gu for help with Raman spectroscopy, M. Su and Z. Hu for help with imaging setups, D. B. Geohegan and B. Zhao of ORNL for supplying pluronic coated SWCNHs, and D. Glass for help with animal experiments. We are grateful to V. Castranova at NIOSH for training with the pharyngeal aspiration and BAL techniques. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.