Chirality-driven transportation and oxidation prevention by chiral selenium nanoparticles.

The chirality of nanoparticles directly influences their transport and biological effects under physiological conditions, but the details of this phenomenon have rarely been explored. Herein, chiral GSH-anchored selenium nanoparticles (G@SeNPs) are fabricated to investigate the effect of their chirality on their transport and antioxidant activity. G@SeNPs modified with different enantiomers show opposite handedness with a tunable circular dichroism signal. Noninvasive positron emission tomography imaging clearly reveals that Cu-64-labeled l-G@SeNPs experience distinctly different transport among the major organs from that of their d-and dl-counterparts, demonstrating that the chirality of the G@SeNPs influences the biodistribution and kinetics. Taking advantage of the strong homologous cell adhesion and uptake, l-G@SeNPs have been shown here to effectively prevent oxidation damage caused by palmitic acid in insulinoma cells.