Fluorescent Multifunctional Organic Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery and Bioimaging: A Tutorial Review

VARGAS NADAL G; KÖBER M; NSAMELA A; TERENZIANI F; SISSA C; PESCINA S; SONVICO F; GAZZALI AM; WAHAB HA; GRISANTI L; OLIVERA ME; PALENA, MC; GUZMAN ML; LUCIANI GIACOBBE LC; JIMENEZ KAIRUZ, AF; VENTOSA N; RATERA I; BELFIELD KD; MAOZ, BM

Pharmaceutics

MDPI

Lugar: Basel; Año: 2022 vol. 14 p. 1 - 37

1999-4923

Fluorescent organic nanoparticles (FONs) are a large family of nanostructures constitutedby organic components that emit light in different spectral regions upon excitation, due to thepresence of organic fluorophores. FONs are of great interest for numerous biological and medicalapplications, due to their high tunability in terms of composition, morphology, surfacefunctionalization, and optical properties. Multifunctional FONs combine several functionalities ina single nanostructure (emission of light, carriers for drug-delivery, functionalization with targetingligands, etc.), opening the possibility of using the same nanoparticle for diagnosis and therapy. Thepreparation, characterization, and application of these multifunctional FONs require amultidisciplinary approach. In this review, we present FONs following a tutorial approach, withthe aim of providing a general overview of the different aspects of the design, preparation, andcharacterization of FONs. The review encompasses the most common FONs developed to date, thedescription of the most important features of fluorophores that determine the optical properties ofFONs, an overview of the preparation methods and of the optical characterization techniques, andthe description of the theoretical approaches that are currently adopted for modeling FONs. Thelast part of the review is devoted to a non-exhaustive selection of some recent biomedicalapplications of FONs.