Hyaluronic-Acid-Assisted Facile Synthesis of MnWO4 Single-Nanoparticle for Efficient Trimodal Imaging and Liver–Renal Structure Display

Multimodal imaging nanoparticles that integrate different imaging modalities into one system could provide complementary and detailed imaging information to satisfy the request of precision medicine. However, most multimodal nanoparticles suffer from multistep synthesis and complicated compositions, which hinder their practical application in biomedical research. Therefore, development of a facile method to prepare a single-nanoparticle contrast agent to achieve multimodal imaging is of significance. In this paper, hyaluronic-acid-modified manganese tungstate nanoparticles (HA-MnWO4 NPs) were successfully synthesized via a facile one-step hydrothermal procedure for efficient T1/T2-weighted MR and CT trimodal imaging in vivo. In the single-nanoparticle, manganese (Mn) with five unpaired electrons offers strong relaxation for MR imaging, while tungsten (W) with high atomic number provides high X-ray attenuation coefficient for CT imaging. Furthermore, HA-template synthesis endows the HA-MnWO4 nanoparticle with good biocompatibility and active targeting ability. In vitro and in vivo experiments reveal that the HA-MnWO4 NPs possess good T1/T2 dual MRI and CT imaging ability, low cytotoxicity, and favorable active tumor homing, demonstrating that the HA-MnWO4 NPs have great potential in clinical MR/CT multimodal imaging. In addition, the liver and renal structures can be clearly displayed by HA-MnWO4-supported imaging. This work will provide technical guidance for the simple development of multifunctional nanoparticles.