Imaging of water soluble CdTe/CdS core-shell quantum dots in inhibiting multidrug resistance of cancer cells

Two different colors of water-soluble core-shell quantum dots CdTe/CdS (green and orange red) have been synthesized and characterized in this paper. The formation of core-shell quantum dots not only improves the fluorescence quantum yield , but also reduces the biological toxicity of quantum dots, and improves the fluorescence lifetime . Two novel fluorescent bioprobes, CdTe/CdS (λ em  = 545 nm)-5-Fu and Bio-CdTe/CdS (λ em  = 600 nm)-TAM, have been synthesized via the interaction of these two core-shell quantum dots with anticancer drugs (5-Fu) and P-gp inhibitors (TAM), respectively. These two fluorescent probes have been simultaneously used in fluorescence imaging of human breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231/MDR. It can be observed that under the action of P-gp inhibitors distributed on the cell membrane, anticancer drugs can be retained in cancer cells. According to the color of quantum dots on the probe, the visualization results of the action of anticancer drugs and P-gp inhibitors can be obtained. This study shows that to prepare functional bioprobes using core-shell quantum dots CdTe/CdS has great potential in the field of biomedical research such as anticancer drugs.