Folic Acid Functionalized Nanoprobes for Fluorescence‐, Dark‐Field‐, and Dual‐Imaging‐Based Selective Detection of Cancer Cells and Tissue

Folate‐functionalized quantum dots, gold/silver nanoparticles, and magnetic quantum dots have been synthesized and used as fluorescence, dark‐field, and dual‐imaging probes for the detection of cancer cells and tissues. A very efficient and generalized folate‐functionalization method has been developed for various amine‐terminated nanoparticles. The advantages of the presented approach are that it can be used to synthesize a wide range of folate‐functionalized nanoparticles and the number of folate molecules per nanoparticle can be controlled easily to tune their interaction with folate receptors present at the cell surface. These folate‐functionalized nanoparticles have been used as cellular and tissue‐imaging bioprobes. Results show that folate‐functionalized nanoparticles act as efficient and selective imaging probes in targeting cancer cells and tissues and labeled cells/tissues can be detected by using different imaging modalities.