Journal of Cell Science & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

Quantum Dots Conjugated with Transferrin for Brain Tumor Cell Imaging

Hiroshi Yukawa, Ryoko Tsukamoto, Ayano Kano, Yukihiro Okamoto, Manabu Tokeshi, Tetsuya Ishikawa, Masaaki Mizuno and Yoshinobu Baba

Malignant brain cancers derived from the cerebral parenchyma are difficult to remove completely due to the impossibility of eliminating the entire cancerous area, thus the eradicating brain cancer at the cellular level is strongly desired in order to obtain a good prognosis. In this study, we assessed the efficiency of Quantum Dots (QDs) conjugated with Transferrin (Tf) (QDs-Tf) for specific imaging of cancer cells. The expression of Transferrin Receptor (TfR) was confirmed on the surface of U87 cells (human glioblastoma cells, a major type of malignant brain cancer cells) at a high level; however the expression in NHA (a normal human astrocyte cell line) was extremally low. The labeling efficiency of U87 cells by QDs-Tf was 99.8%, while that of QDs alone was 8.4%. In addition, the red fluorescence derived from U87 cells labeled with QDs-Tf was clearly detected and the intensity was maintained for at least two days. These data suggest that imaging glioblastoma cells using QDs-Tf is useful for the detecting cancer at the cellular level with clinical applications