Biocompatible cancer-targeted multimodal bioimaging agents synthesized via acid-promoted transformation

Targeted imaging nanomaterials are promising for the broad spectrum of biomedical applications such as diagnostics, biosensing, and theranostics. Thus, novel synthetic techniques are of high demand to meet complex requirements of the applications. Here we demonstrate the strategy to synthesize novel monodisperse biocompatible iron oxide nanoparticles. We show specificity and high imaging abilities of the nanoparticles as visible light- and infrared-active optical labels for in vitro and in vivo studies. The results demonstrate that synthetic strategy could be used to design versatile nanoagents for diagnostics and in vivo imaging.