Discipline: Chemistry and Chemical Sciences
Subcategory: Chemistry (not Biochemistry)
Terriona Cowan - Jackson State University
Co-Author(s): Pohlee Cheah, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS ; Yongfeng Zhao, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS
Falling under the ranks of heart disease, cancer is the United States second leading cause of massive mortality. In 2017, there are roughly 1.7 million cases projected. To avert mortality rates, preventive measures are to be taken. These preventive measures include conventional diagnosis with a significant reliance on molecular imaging. Among all imaging modalities, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used in clinics worldwide. MRI can produce images with extraordinarily high temporal and spatial resolution, especially in soft tissue. It has been demonstrated that magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles are able to effectively enhance the contrast between normal and pathological tissues. However the sensitivity of MRI is relatively low.
Positron emission tomography (PET), on the other hand, uses signaling produced by positron emitting radiotracers to attain an image. Because of very high sensitivity, up to 10-12 mol/L, PET is widely used in clinics for disease diagnosis. Although used frequently, PET lacks the ability to gain the information of location due to low resolution. Therefore the combination of MRI and PET will give synergy of high anatomical spatial resolution of MRI as well as incomparable sensitivity and functional imaging of PET.
Although significant progress has been made to label iron oxide NPs for dual modality for PET/MRI imaging, the current probes are either unstable, polydisperse in size, irregular in shape, or have uncontrollable iron oxide surface hemistry. To address these problems, we report the synthesis of uniformed Cu doped small size Fe2O3 nanoparticles via heat up method.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation HRD- 1700390 ; Office of Naval Research
Faculty Advisor: Yongfeng Zhao, yongfeng.zhao@jsums.edu
Role: My contributions to this research consisted of synthesizing the small sized and monodispersed iron oxide NPs. I also doped them with the copper and were able to make them biocompatible.