Fluorescent quantum dots: Synthesis, biomedical optical imaging, and biosafety assessment

The marriage of nanomaterials with biology has significantly promoted advancement of biological techniques, profoundly facilitating basic research and practical applications in biological and biomedical fields. Taking advantages of unique optical properties (e.g., strong fluorescence, robust photostability, size-tunable emission wavelengths, etc.), fluorescent quantum dots (QDs), appearing as high-performance biological fluorescent nanoprobes, have been extensively explored for a variety of biomedical optical imaging applications. In this review, we present representative synthetic strategies for preparation of QDs and their applications in biomedical optical imaging, as well as risk assessments in vitro and in vivo. Briefly, we first summarize recent progress in fabrication of QDs via two rudimentary approaches, i.e., organometallic route and aqueous synthesis. Next we present representative achievement in QDs-based in vitro and in vivo biomedical optical imaging applications. We further discuss the toxicity assessment of QDs, ranging from cell studies to animal models. In the final section, we discuss challenges and perspectives for the QDs-relative bioapplications in the future.