University of Ottawa

Purpose

Lanthanide-doped nanoparticles (Ln-NPs) are an emerging class of nanomaterials with light shifting properties that make them highly attractive materials for use in biomedical diagnosis and therapeutic intervention. Herein, understanding of their optical properties when interacting with biological systems is an important step towards the design of more efficient probes, The aim of this collaborative project is the design of such more efficient optical probes, while setting a strong focus on the assessment of the probes' cytotoxicity and nano-bio-interaction. In order to achieve our goal, i.e. the design of small-yet-bright and safe-to-use optical bioprobes (Ln-NPs), research at the HemmerLab will focus on the synthesis and surface modification of inorganic lanthanide-doped nanoparticles and their structural and optical characterization. Herein, we will use the emerging technique of hyperspectral imaging in order to gain insight into environment-specific photoluminescence of the Ln-NPs incubated with various biological cells.