Figure 4. Murine macrophages take up plasma-treated quantum dot nanoparticles by fluid-phase pinocytosis.

Quantum dots were incubated for 24 hours in Apoe-knockout mouse plasma. Subsequently, M-CSF–differentiated murine bone marrow–derived macrophages were incubated with increasing concentrations of plasma-treated fluorescent quantum dots (x axis) for 5 hours, and then macrophage uptake of fluorescent nanoparticles (y axis) was determined as described in Methods.