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. 2025 Jun;35(6):4225-4242.
doi: 10.1007/s10895-024-03806-6. Epub 2024 Jul 3.

Surface Passivation of Carbon Dots for Tunable Biological Performance

Mary M Mikhail  1 , Hanan B Ahmed  2 , Amira E M Abdallah  1 , Mahmoud El-Shahat  3 , Hossam E Emam  4
Affiliations

Surface Passivation of Carbon Dots for Tunable Biological Performance

Mary M Mikhail et al. J Fluoresc. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Recent investigations were shifted this trend toward exploring the biomedical applicability of CDs, relevant to chronic diseases. Herein, a systematic approach is demonstrated for studying the effect of variation in the surface passivation of CDs for tuning its optical character and biological performance. Alginate and pectin were successfully clustered oxygen-surface passivated CDs, while, chitin was used to nucleate nitrogen-surface passivated CDs. Pectin-treated with base (4.1 ± 1.8 nm) and chitin-treated acid (3.5 ± 1.7 nm) were ingrained the smallest O-surface passivated CDs and N-surface passivated CDs, respectively. However, N-surface passivated CDs were shown with the highest optical activity. CDs colloids prepared from alginate, pectin & chitin, resulted in reduction of tumor cell viability percentage to be 80.8%, 74.0% & 69.0% respectively. O-surface passivated CDs nucleated from alginate showed the highest anti-proliferative effects. Moreover, O-surface passivated CDs (from alginate) showed the supremacy in inhibition of inflammation, while, increasing of its concentration ten times resulted in significant increment in inhibition percent to be 28% & 42%, using 1 μg/mL & 10 μg/mL, respectively. In summarization, it could be decided that, compared to N-surface passivated CDs (from chitin), O-surface passivated CDs (from alginate) showed excellency in application as a concurrent anti-inflammatory/antitumor drug, to be applied as a potential therapeutical reagent for treatment of inflammation, in production of vaccines, immune-therapeutics, and immune-suppressive drugs.

Keywords: Anti-inflammation; Optical characters; Surface passivation; Tumor Anti-proliferative; Tunable CDs.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethical approval: We confirm that all experimental protocol concerning anticancer and anti-inflammatory were carried out and approved by Nawah Scientific Inc – Mokatam, Cairo, Egypt. We confirm that all methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. We confirm that all methods are reported in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no competing financial interest.

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