Design and Characterization of Novel Nanomaterials for Cancer Imaging and Therapy

The emergence of bionanotechnology has allowed the design of novel technologi-cal tools for a variety of biomedical applications. Despite the incompatibility of native semiconductor quantum dots with biological environment, this class of nanocrystals was among the first nanomaterials to demonstrate their use in biological labeling and imaging applications. In this thesis, new surface modification chemistry and synthetic strategies were developed to produce high quality biocompatible and bioconjugatable near-infrared emitting quantum dots for deep tissue in vivo imaging and detection applications. By carefully selecting a specific mixture of semiconductor elements to obtain a desired bandgap energy and optimizing the procedure for surface coating, successful synthesis of high quality, water-soluble, near-infrared emitting quantum dots were demonstrated. These developments allows for the use of quantum dots as alternative contrast agents for sophisticated biological imaging applications that are currently unachievable using conventional fluorophores. In addition, using metallic nanoparticles, it was found that cells possess the ability to differentiate nanoparticles of various sizes upon their binding with specific membrane receptors. These receptors undergo rapid cellular internalization which altered their traffick