Abstract

Surface Modified Lead Sulphide Quantum Dots for In Vitro Imaging of Breast Cancer Cells Adopting Confocal Raman Spectroscopy

Author(s): Arunashree JS, Suresh NP, Sujesh S, Vaishnav KP, Vishnu, Vishnu S, Malini Prabhakaran, VV Isonc and CO Sreekala

Nanoparticles are potentially used for early cancer detection, accurate diagnosis, and cancer treatment. Due to their small direct band gap and large excitation Bohr radius, lead sulphide quantum dots are important semiconductor material. The red shifted emission band, coupled with the small particle size, is facilitating clearance of imaging. Lead sulphide quantum dots bio-conjugates are promising candidates for targeted infrared molecular imaging and future infrared tissue imaging applications. Because of these many characters, in this paper, we tagged cancer cells with quantum dots for better imaging in IR region. We synthesized lead sulphide quantum dots using Hines and Scholes method. Surface modification of quantum dots is carried out using L-cysteine. Surface modification makes semiconductor quantum dots water soluble. The amino groups present in L-cysteine will bind to the cancer cells and the thiol group will bind to the quantum dots. Confocal Raman spectroscopy is used to image the cancer cells tagged with modified lead sulphide quantum dots.