Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Cornell University have developed a new generation of microscopic particles for molecular imaging, constituting one of the first promising nanoparticle platforms that may be readily adapted for tumor targeting and treatment in the clinic. According to the investigators, these particles are biologically safe, stable, and small enough to be easily transported across the body's structures and efficiently excreted through the urine. It is the first time that all of these properties have been successfully engineered on a single-particle platform, called "C dots," in order to optimize the biological behavior and imaging properties of nanoparticles for use in a wide array of biomedical and life science applications.
Imaging experiments in mice conducted at MSKCC showed that this new particle platform, or "probe," can be molecularly customized to target surface receptors or other molecules that are expressed on tumor surfaces or even within tumors, and then imaged to evaluate various biological properties of the tumor, including the extent of a tumor's blood vessels, cell death, treatment response, and invasive or metastatic spread to lymph nodes and distant organs.
Created at Cornell University and modified at MSKCC, C dots have been optimized for use in optical and PET imaging and can be tailored to any particle size without adversely impacting its fluorescent properties. For the first time, researchers were able to make them small enough (in the 5 nanometer range) to remain in the bloodstream for a reasonable amount of time and be efficiently excreted by the kidneys. Researchers were also able to increase their brightness by 300 percent, enabling cancer cells to be tracked for longer periods of time in the body.
