Highly Sensitive Imaging of Cancerwith Functional Nanoparticles

• Published in: Journal of photopolymer science and technology 2015-11, Vol.28 (6), p.731-731
• Main Authors: Gonda, Kohsuke, Hamada, Yoh, Kitamura, Narufumi, Tada, Hiroshi, Miyashita, Minoru, Kamei, Takashi, Ishida, Takanori, Ohuchi, Noriaki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cancer; Diagnostic systems; Fluorescence; Imaging; Membranes; Nanoparticles; Therapy; Viscosity
• ISSN: 0914-9244; 1349-6336

It is important for cancer therapy to understand cancer mechanisms and develop a diagnostic method. We have developed a method for in vivo imaging with very high spatial accuracy (~9 nm) under a confocal microscope and succeeded in tracking the membrane protein during metastasis in living mice. We found that the tumor cells showed increases in membrane fluidity (over 1000-fold) and formed local pseudopodia in the process of metastasis, suggesting that membrane fluidity and morphological changes are critical for metastasis. To develop a novel immunohistochemistry (IHC), we newly-made organic fluorescent material-assembled nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have 1000-fold greater fluorescent intensity compared to representative organic fluorescent material. Consequently, the fluorescence of these nanoparticles exhibited a significantly high signal-to-noise ratio on IHC-imaged cancer tissue, including high-level autofluorescence. The IHC method using these nanoparticles was applied for the identification of estrogen receptor-expression levels in breast cancer tissue. The results demonstrated that the diagnostic accuracy and quantitative sensitivity were greatly improved compared to previous IHC methods. This technique would be useful for the prediction of clinical responses to ER-targeted therapy.