Fluorescent and magnetic stellate mesoporous silica for bimodal imaging and magnetic hyperthermia

There is currently a crucial need of innovative multifunctional nanoparticles combining, in one formulation, imaging and therapy capacities allowing thus an accurate diagnosis and a therapy monitored by imaging. Multimodal imaging will ensure to speed up diagnosis, and to increase its sensitivity, reliability and specificity for a better management of the disease. Combined with a therapeutic action, it will also enable to treat the disease in a specific personalized manner in feedback mode. The mastered design of such bioprobes as well as the demonstration of their efficiency are still challenges to face in nanomedicine. In this work, novel fluorescent and magnetic core–shell nanocomposites have been designed to ensure, in one nanoformulation, bimodal fluorescence and MRI imaging coupled with therapy by magnetic hyperthermia. They consist in the coating of a magnetic iron oxide (IO) core (ca. 18 nm diameter to ensure magnetic hyperthermia) by an original large pore stellate mesoporous silica (STMS) shell to produce uniform and mono-core magnetic core–shell nanocomposites denoted IO@STMS NPs. To confer fluorescence properties, CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) NPs were grafted inside the large pores of the IO@STMS nanocomposites. To provide biocompatibility and opsonization-resistance, a tightly-bound human serum albumin (HSA) coating is added around the nanocomposite using an original IBAM-based strategy. Cellular toxicity and non-specific cell–nanomaterial interactions allowed to determine a concentration range for safe application of these NPs. Cellular endosomes containing spontaneously-uptaken NPs displayed strong and photostable QD fluorescence signals while magnetic relaxivity measurements confirm their suitability as contrast agent for MRI. HeLa cell-uptaken NPs exposed to a magnetic field of 100 kHz and 357 Gauss (or 28.5 kA m−1) display an outstanding 65% cell death at a very low iron concentration (1.25 μg Fe mL−1), challenging current magnetic hyperthermia nanosystems. Furthermore, at the particularly demanding conditions of clinical use with low frequency and amplitude field (100 kHz, 117 Gauss or 9.3 kA m−1), magnetic hyperthermia combined with the delivery of a chemotherapeutic drug, doxorubicin, allowed 46% cell death, which neither the drug nor the NPs alone yielded, evidencing thus the synergistic effect of this combined treatment.