Detalle de: Nanoparticles quantification inside cells by near‐edge absorption soft X‐ray nanotomography

Recent advances in superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) design have generated new possibilities for nano‐biotechnology and nano‐medicine. Achieving the full potential of SPION will nonetheless require precise quantitative analysis at sufficient resolution to model the interactions between nanoparticles and the cell environment. The results from this analysis will determine the dose for either drug‐delivery or hyperthermia treatments as well as its feasibility. To get an insight into this problem we incubated 15 nm SPION functionalized with dimercaptosuccinic acid with MCF‐7 breast cancer cells [1] as a model system to be analyzed exploiting the iron differential absorption contrast in the L2‐edge. Near‐edge absorption soft X‐ray nanotomography (NEASXT) combines whole‐cell 3D structure determination at 50 nm resolution, with 3D elemental mapping and high throughput. We solved three‐dimensional distribution of SPIONs within cells with sensitivity sufficient for detecting the density corresponding to a single nanoparticle (Fig. 1)[2].