Bruce Turnbull, Stefan Pöhlmann, Yuan Guo, Dejian Zhou. Darshita Budhadev, Emma Poole, Inga Nehlmeier, Yuanyuan Liu, James Hooper, Elizabeth Kalverda, Uchangi Satyaprasad Akshath, Nicole Hondow, W.Fluorescent Nanohybrids from ZnS/CdSe Quantum Dots Functionalized with Triantennary, N-Hydroxy-p-(4-arylbutanamido)benzamide/Gallamide Dendrons That Act as Inhibitors of Histone Deacetylase for Lung Cancer. Chien-Tien Chen, Santosh Salunke, Tzu-Tang Wei, Yen-An Tang, Yi-Ching Wang.This article is cited by 23 publications. The resulting QDs have been further employed for ratiometric detection of protein, exemplified by neutravidin, down to 5 pM, as well as for fluorescence imaging of target cancer cells. Moreover, compact biotinylated QDs can be readily prepared by UCEP in a facile, one-step process. These QDs allow rapid, ratiometric detection of the Affimer target protein down to 10 pM via a QD-sensitized Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) readout signal. The QDs prepared by UCEP using dihydrolipoic acid (DHLA)-zwitterion ligand can be readily conjugated with octa-histidine (His 8)-tagged antibody mimetic proteins (known as Affimers). These advantageous properties make them well suited for cellular imaging and ratiometric biosensing applications. The resulting QDs are compact (hydrodynamic radius, R h, 90% of original fluorescence), resist nonspecific adsorption of proteins, and display good stability in biological buffers even with high salt content (e.g., 2 M NaCl). The UCEP works conveniently with air-stable lipoic acid (LA)-based ligands by exploiting tris(2-carboxylethyl phosphine)-based rapid in situ reduction. An ultraefficient cap-exchange protocol (UCEP) that can convert hydrophobic quantum dots (QDs) into stable, biocompatible, and aggregation-free water-dispersed ones at a ligand:QD molar ratio (LQMR) as low as 500, some 20–200-fold less than most literature methods, has been developed.