Abstract
Nanoprobes have been increasingly applied in photoacoustic imaging to improve the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, especially the liver cancer, the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The mononuclear phagocytic system (MPS), however, exhibits a crucial impediment to the probe usage, preventing the accumulation of probes within the liver. This, in turn, paralyzes the effort of diagnosis enhancement. To overcome the MPS clearance, a biomimetic probe consisting of erythrocyte membrane-camouflaged gold nanostars was designed and synthesized in this study. The probe possesses broad absorption spectrum, photostability, and photothermal conversion efficiency. More importantly, it yields preeminent immune escape ability, thus being able to escape the MPS clearance and greatly boost the accumulation of probes at the tumor sites with prolonged blood circulation. Experimentally, we demonstrate that the probe can serve as an effective nanoprobe to enhance the in vivo photoacoustic imaging and photothermal treatment of in situ early stage liver tumors in mice.
Highlights
Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a noninvasive hybrid modality that is able to reveal high optical contrast at ultrasonic resolution in relatively thick soft tissue, like liver, by converting nonionizing optical radiation into not-so-scattered ultrasonic waves [1,2,3,4]
The results of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), DLS, zeta potential measurements and SDS-PAGE test demonstrated that the RBC membranes successfully clothed the spiny nanoprobes, while retaining the essential protein characteristics (Fig. 1A–D)
We have clearly demonstrated that red blood cell membrane (RBCm)-AuNSs could evade the mononuclear phagocytic system (MPS), prolong the circulation time in vivo, and increase the possibility of nanoprobe enrichment at the tumor sites, which leads to enhanced photoacoustic and photothermal effects
Summary
Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a noninvasive hybrid modality that is able to reveal high optical contrast at ultrasonic resolution in relatively thick soft tissue, like liver, by converting nonionizing optical radiation into not-so-scattered ultrasonic waves [1,2,3,4]. Many endogenous tissue chromophores (optical absorbers), such as oxy-/deoxy-hemoglobin, melanin, and water, can provide rich structural and functional information [5]. For deep organs, especially the liver, the background (normal tissue) poses strong optical absorption and scattering over visible optical spectrum, severely impairing the diagnosis of the liver cancer [7], the fourth leading cause of cancerrelated deaths worldwide [8]. In this scenario, exogenous agents with excellent near-infrared (NIR) absorption are of great significance: the NIR light yields deeper penetration depth [9,10]
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