An artificial intelligence probe helps to see tum

The identification of tumor tumors plays an essential role in the clinical treatment of cancer. At present, biopsy is the gold standard for the identification of malignancies in most tumor cases, but it is invasive that can cause considerable discomfort to patients and potentially increase the risk of distant metastases due to the complex sampling process. With the development of molecular imaging probes, non-invasive medical imaging approaches, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), fluorescence imaging (FI), computed tomography and ultrasound, etc., have been used for non-invasive tumor diagnosis. Nevertheless, most imaging strategies often rely on imaging probes that have no specificity for the identification of tumor malignancy.

Given that necrotic cell death and overexpressed potassium ions (K^†) channels are important features of malignant tumors, but not for benign ones, the extracellular K^† The concentration in the microenvironment of the malignant tumor is significantly increased compared to that of benign tissue. Based on this, a new study led by Prof. Daishun Ling of Shanghai Jiao Tong University a K^†-sensitive dual-mode imaging probe (KDMN) to realize real-time tumor imaging while identifying the malignancy.

The KDMN consists of optical K^† indicators embedded in magnetic mesoporous nanoparticles of silica, which are then coated with a K^†– selective membrane containing only K. passage^† while other cations are excluded. The KDMNs provide superior MR contrast effect and K^†-specific FI performance. In addition, KDMN-enhanced MRI provides attenuated signals at the tumor sites for effective tumor detection. Meanwhile, KDMN-based K^†-sensitive FI gives a significant difference in fluorescence signals between malignant and benign tumors because there is an increased extracellular K^† concentration in the malignant tumor microenvironment. Notably, the integration of KDMN-based MRI and FI via cascaded logic circuitry has successfully achieved self-confirmation of dual-mode imaging results, enabling reliable and accurate imaging of tumor malignancy.

The research was recently published in National Scientific Review† The first author is Dr. Qiyue Wang, and the corresponding authors are Prof. Daishun Ling of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Prof. Fangyuan Li of Zhejiang University. “This is the first demonstration of a K^†-sensitive dual-mode imaging probe for MRI/FI cross-controlled diagnosis of tumor malignancy,” said Prof. Ling. “And this ion-sensitive cascaded ‘AND’ logic imaging strategy would pave the way for the development of next-generation imaging probes for highly sensitive and accurate diagnosis of ion dyshomeostasis associated diseases.”

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See the article:

AK^†-sensitive AND gate dual mode probe for simultaneous tumor imaging and malignancies identification

https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac080