Tuning magnetic relaxation properties of “hard cores” in core-shell colloids by modification of “soft shell”

The present work introduces an impact of polyelectrolyte-based hydrophilic shell on magnetic relaxivity and luminescence of hard cores built from isostructural complexes of Tb(III) and Gd(III) in the core-shell aqueous colloids. Microscopic and scattering techniques reveal “plum pudding” morphology of the colloids, where polyelectrolyte-coated ultrasmall (<5 nm) hard cores form aggregates in aqueous solutions. Interaction of bovine serum albumin (BSA) with the colloids provides a tool to modify the polyelectrolyte-based shell, which is the reason for the improvement in both aggregation behavior of the colloids and their relaxivity. The modification of the hydrophilic polyelectrolyte-based shell enables to tune the longitudinal relaxivity from 5.9 to 23.3 mM−1 s−1 at 0.47 T. This tendency is the reason for significant improvement of contrasting effect of the colloids in T1- and T2-weighted images obtained by whole body scanner at 1.5 T. High contrasting effect of the colloids, together with low cytotoxicity towards Wi-38 diploid human cells makes them promising MRI contrast agents.