Low-toxicity FePt nanoparticles for the targeted and enhanced diagnosis of breast tumors using few centimeters deep whole-body photoacoustic imaging

Yubin Liu; Pei-Chun Wu; Sen Guo; Pi-Tai Chou; Chuxia Deng; Shang-Wei Chou; Zhen Yuan; Tzu-Ming Liu

doi:10.1016/j.pacs.2020.100179

Low-toxicity FePt nanoparticles for the targeted and enhanced diagnosis of breast tumors using few centimeters deep whole-body photoacoustic imaging

Photoacoustics. 2020 Apr 11:19:100179. doi: 10.1016/j.pacs.2020.100179. eCollection 2020 Sep.

Authors

Yubin Liu¹, Pei-Chun Wu¹, Sen Guo¹, Pi-Tai Chou², Chuxia Deng^{1

3}, Shang-Wei Chou², Zhen Yuan^{1

3}, Tzu-Ming Liu^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Cancer Center, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.
² Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
³ Institute of Translational Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.

Abstract

A considerable amount of early breast tumors grown at a depth over 2 cm in breast tissues. With high near-infrared absorption of iron-platinum (FePt) nanoparticles, we achieved few centimeters deep photoacoustic (PA) imaging for the diagnosis of breast tumors. The imaging depth can extend over 5 cm in chicken breast tissues at the low laser energy density of 20 mJ/cm² (≤ ANSI safety limit). After anti-VEGFR conjugation and the tail-vein injection, we validated their targeting on tumor sites by the confocal microscopy and PA imaging. Using a home-made whole-body in vivo PA imaging, we found that the nanoparticles were rapidly cleared away from the site of the tumor and majorly metabolized through the liver. These results validated the clinical potential of the FePt nanoparticles in the low-toxicity PA theragnosis of early breast cancer and showed the capacity of our whole-body PA imaging technique on monitoring the dynamic biodistribution of nanoparticles in the living body.

Keywords: Breast cancer; FePt nanoparticles; Imaging depth; Whole-body photoacoustic imaging.