Herein we have established a strategy for the synthesis of highly luminescent and biocompatible europium-doped lanthanum orthophosphate (La0.85PO4Eu0.153+) nanorods. The structure and morphogenesis of these nanorods have been probed by XRD, SEM, and TEM/HRTEM techniques. The XRD result confirms that the as-synthesized nanorods form in a monazite phase with a monoclinic crystal structure. Furthermore, the surface morphology shows that the synthesized nanorods have an average diameter of similar to 90 nm and length of similar to 2 mu m. The HRTEM images show clear lattice fringes that support the presence of better crystal quality and enhanced photoluminescence hypersensitive red emission at 610 nm (D-5(0)-F-7(2)) upon 394 nm wavelength excitation. Furthermore, time-resolved spectroscopy and an MTT assay of these luminescent nanorods demonstrate a photoluminescent decay time of milliseconds with nontoxic behavior. Hence, these obtained results suggest that the as-synthesized luminescent nanorods could be potentially used in invisible security ink and high-contrast bioimaging applications.