Gold-Nanodot-Decorated Hollow Carbon Nanospheres Based Nanoplatform for Intracellular miRNA Imaging in Colorectal Cancer Cells

We report a new biofunctionalized nanoplatform based on hyaluronic acid-coated gold-nano-dot-decorated hollow carbon nanospheres (AuHCNs−HA) for microRNA imaging in living cells. Importantly, the HA-coated nanoplatforms could be internalized into target cells via CD44 receptor-mediated endocytosis. It can be further applied for intracellular miR-21 imaging in CD44-positive colorectal cancer cells.