Abstract
Tumor metastases account for about 90% of cancer-related death, among which lymphatic metastases play a pivotal role. Therefore, high-efficiency sentinel lymph node (SLN) identification is significant for lymph node (LN) metastasis diagnosis in clinic. Herein, a novel in vivo covalent albumin-binding near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent IR820-maleimide conjugate (IR-Mal) is firstly designed as a SLN dual-mode imaging agent. The IR-Mal conjugate exhibits bright blue appearance and its large Stokes shift (over 100 nm) increases the fluorescent imaging resolution effectively. The fluorescence intensity of covalent albumin-binding IR-Mal (BSA-IR-Mal) complex is considerably stronger than that of IR-Mal. In vivo, IR-Mal could rapidly covalently bind the tissue interstitial albumin following subcutaneous administration and BSA-IR-Mal complexes could specifically accumulate on LN, and detect both normal and metastatic SLN through naked-eye and fluorescence imaging with high resolution. Moreover, the light stability and enhanced fluorescence intensity of BSA-IR-Mal complex facilitates its diagnosis accuracy. These findings suggest that such in vivo irreversible albumin-binding fluorescence conjugates could serve as a new agent for dual-mode imaging and have a great potential to be applied in the SLNs imaging and diagnosis.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 119279 |
Journal | Biomaterials |
Volume | 217 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81573371 , U1608283 ), Key projects of Liaoning Province Department of Education (No. 2017LZD03 ), and Key projects of Technology bureau in Shenyang (No. 18400408 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
- Covalent albumin binding
- IR820-maleimide conjugate
- Lymph node metastasis diagnosis
- Naked-eye and fluorescence dual-mode imaging