Turning carbon dots into selenium bearing nanoplatforms with in vitro GPx-like activity and pro-oxidant activity Pérez Garrido, Laura Ortega Muñoz, Mariano Hernández Mateo, Fernando López Jaramillo, Francisco Javier Santoyo González, Francisco Selenium nanoparticles Carbon dots Glutathione peroxidase-like activity Janus element Nanomedicine Selenium (Se) has been defined as the “Janus element”, with one face showing antioxidant activity and the other pro-oxidant activity. The biological effect of Se depends on both dose and speciation. Se nanoparticles are attracting major interest, although their large-scale preparation for biomedical applications is not trivial. We hypothesize that acid anhydride-coated carbon dots (AACD) are an attractive platform for preparing nanoparticles containing chemically defined Se. The reaction of AA-CD with 3- selenocyanatopropan-1-amine yields carbon dots bearing selenocyanate and carboxylate groups (CD-SeCN) that allow for tuning the hydrosolubility. CD-SeCN has a Se content of 0.36 μmol per mg of nanoparticles, and they show the typical photoluminescence of carbon dots. The selenocyanate groups (SeCN) exhibited glutathione peroxidase-like activity and cytotoxicity. Data show that antioxidant behavior differs between normal and tumor cells, and the evaluation on HEK293 and A549 cells reveals that the toxicity of CD-SeCN depends on dose, time, and intracellular glutathione (GSH) content. The toxicity of CD-SeCN decreases with the time of incubation and the cell death mechanism switches from necrosis to apoptosis, indicating that CD-SeCN is neutralized. Additionally, high levels of intracellular GSH exert a protective effect. These results support a pharmacological potential in cancers with low levels of intracellular GSH. The use of AA-CD as nanoplatforms is a general strategy that paves the way for the engineering of advanced nanosystems 2023-05-17T07:46:43Z 2023-05-17T07:46:43Z 2023-03-16 journal article Perez-Garrido, L., Ortega-Muñoz, M., Hernandez-Mateo, F. et al. Turning carbon dots into selenium bearing nanoplatforms with in vitro GPx-like activity and pro-oxidant activity. Nano Res. (2023). [https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5442-3] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/81599 10.1007/s12274-023-5442-3 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Springer Nature