Fabrication, self-assembly and biomedical applications of luminescent sodium hyaluronate with aggregation-induced emission feature

•Aggregation-induced emission fluorescent organic nanoparticles•Fabrication of AIE-active carbohydrate polymers through formation of dynamic bonds•These AIE-active fluorescent organic nanoparticles possess good properties.•These AIE-active fluorescent organic nanoparticles are promising for biological imaging.

Organic dyes with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature have recently attracted much research attention for biomedical applications due to their inimitable optical superiority. Although many reports have demonstrated for fabricating AIE-active nanoprobes, the synthesis of AIE-active natural polymers is still very limited. In this work, fluorescent organic nanoparticles (FONs) with AIE feature have been prepared through formation of Schiff base interaction between amino-terminated AIE dye (PhE) and oxidation sodium hyaluronate (OSH). The final copolymers (denoted as PhE-OSH) were characterized by means of 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, fluorescent spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The potential of using PhE-OSH in biomedical applications were examined by cell viability assay as well as confocal imaging capability. Results suggested that PhE can facilely conjugate with OSH through formation of Schiff base. The synthesized PhE-OSH FONs exhibited well dispersibility in aqueous solution, small size, strong fluorescence and good biocompatibility. Taken together, we developed a novel strategy for fabrication of AIE-active FONs, which showed great potential for biomedical applications.

Graphical abstractThe luminescent and water dispersible fluorescent organic nanoparticles based on hyaluronate and organic dye with aggregation-induced emission characteristic have been simply fabricated through formation of dynamic Schiff base.Download high-res image (70KB)Download full-size image