Biological tagging agents

KJ. Rothschild etal, US Patent 6,589,736 (July 8, 2003) Assignee The Trustees of Boston University Utility Biological Tagging Agent for Nucleic Acids... 

Radiopharmaceutical formulations based on "mTc may be divided into two major classes.635 The Class I formulations include what may be described as technetium tagged materials. These may be particles such as cells or colloidal substances, or they may be molecular species such as proteins or other large biological molecules. The essential feature of these agents is that their biodistribution behaviour is determined by the nature of the substrate material. Thus the attachment of a "mTc label should have little or no effect on their biodistribution. However, it cannot necessarily be assumed that this will be the case, especially when relatively low molecular weight substrates are involved. 

NIR-absorbing metal nanostructures are appealing for biomedical imaging applications for reasons discussed previously, and this includes biological applications of SERS. For example, NIR-active core-shell superparticles have been prepared by the electrostatic assembly of densely packed Au nanoparticles on submicron silica spheres.34 Such superparticle probes can be implanted into mammalian cells by cationic transfection,186 and have produced SERS signals from absorbed DNA.187 Biocompatible SERS nanoparticle tags can also be used as contrast agents for in vivo detection, as previously discussed.169... 

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