Biosensing and Study of Biological Cells using Hyperpolarized 129 Xe
Abstract
Among the species in which nuclear spin can be transiently polarized, xenon has a special place for the study of biological processes due to its physical properties. It has no toxicity, it can be easily handled due to a freezing point at 162 K. Importantly, its large electron cloud gives this atom specific chemical affinities, and a large variability of its NMR parameters: the chemical shift of the monoatomic species has been shown to span a range from 0 ppm (gas phase) to 300 ppm (solid phase 1), longitudinal relaxation time values range from ca. 5 seconds (xenon in blood 2) to several hours. Its solubility in many biological fluids (a few mM per atm in water at room temperature, hundreds of mM in lipids) makes it a powerful spy of biological events. In the aim of characterizing biological environments and events, xenon can be used alone, or functionalized by dedicated molecular systems for which it has a high affinity. These systems bear ligands that enable active targeting of biological receptors. This chapter aims at summarizing some of the recent research and development we have developed using free hyper-polarized xenon and xenon in molecular hosts to image or characterize biological cell receptors.
Domains
Material chemistry
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
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