Normal female balb c mice

Normal female BALB/c mice aged 3 months were obtained from Charles River, and maintained in the animal husbandry facility of Albert Einstein College of Medicine according to the guidelines of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC), and the guidelines of the Albert Einstein Institute for Animal Studies. All mice were kept under biosafety level 2 conditions, as required for LM.

All animal studies were performed in compliance with guidelines set forth by the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare and approved by the Washington University Animal Studies Committee. Normal female Balb/c mice (Charles River Laboratory, Wilmington, MA) were used for the biodistribution studies. About 370 kBq of ⁶⁴CuAuNCs or ⁶⁴CuAuNCs-AMD3100 in 100 μL saline (APP pharmaceuticals, Schaumburg, IL) was injected via the tail vein. The mice were anesthetized with inhaled isoflurane and re-anesthetized before euthanasia by cervical dislocation at each time point (1 h, 4 h, and 24 h post injection, n = 4/group). Organs of interest were collected, weighed, and counted in a Beckman 8000 gamma counter (Beckman, Fullterton, CA). Standards were prepared and measured along with the samples to calculate percentage of the injected dose per gram of tissue (%ID/g). The mean blood half-lives of the two nanoclusters were calculated based on the blood retention data using a nonlinear regression analysis (Prism, version 6.04, Graphpad).